"When Aaron returned from Costa Rica he looked like a new man. I had not seen him so refreshed and joyful. He spoke glowingly of his time there, his adventures, the people and the incredible nature and wildlife. He was an exotic adventurer, and with his cachet for caring for the most vulnerable and caring and praying for the dying while fielding outrage and contempt from the likes of Griffin and his friends, I could not help but love him. I was too shy to say or ask him anything, I felt so in awe of him. Others didn't seem to know quite what to make of him. He was always a wild card at St. James. But I wasn't about to stick around either, because with Kenny gone and my own fragile emotional state, I simply could not face any more time at St Jude's, being so vulnerable and undefended again to Griffin's depredations.
"And Dad was needing my support, as he was feeling the loss of Kenny probably even more keenly than I was. I returned to St. Mark's, and enrolled in nursing school, and I didn't want to further disrupt my stability. We spent a lot of time together, and I did everything I could think of to help out at church. I was also enjoying the rest from having to avoid Griffin and his fellow vultures. Besides, after such an incredibly rich spiritual diet of the high church excesses of St. Jude's, it was so comforting and refreshing returning to the simple plain low church ordinariness of St. John's. It was like going from a steady diet of English trifle, to simple homemade whole wheat bread smothered with homemade strawberry jam.
"Life took on a certain ordinariness. I even started dating, women, but always good wholesome Christian young ladies, nothing leading to the bedchamber, no embarrassing mishaps that perhaps their courting young swain was really trying to flee from his attraction to men. And I wanted to keep dad happy, because he had more than once hinted that his one regret of all the time I had spent with Kenny was my complete lack of role modelling for any kind of wholesome sexuality."
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