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This story portrayed three alternate realities. I presume that most readers have concluded that the third reality is the true story. If that is what you decided, you were right. I have shuflled cities, schools, and names, to make everybody unidentifiable. Some of the parts of the First and Second Alternate Realities are based on real life. The Third Alternate Reality is true, except for the changes I have noted.

I have thought of all kinds of things that I might want to share in this epilogue. But I think that the stories speak for themselves. I'll share two comments:

I have forgiven David. Not for committing suicide-that was a choice he made and he does not need to be forgiven for it. I have forgiven him for leaving me. For not meeting the train. For not telling me what was going on in his head. It took a long time for me to come to that point. And when recent thoughts of David returned to my head-the thought that David might have been gay and that may have been part of the cause of his suicide-I revisited all kinds of thoughts that I had believed were behind me. And then I forgave him all over again.

I have come to realize that life is a series of choices. The First and Second Alternate Realities are stories of boys and men that, for the most part, made good choices. We all would like that to be the story of our own lives, but we all make bad choices as well as good ones. I believe that David made a bad one that evening in the park-not in an Evanston park, but in a real park in a real Midwestern city. But since I can't get inside David's head I can't really condemn him for a bad choice. Who knows what kind of torments he was suffering? I have made several choices along the way. I chose not to be open with David, nor with any other man. I married, had children and grandchildren. I wouldn't trade my wife, the children, or the grandchildren for anything. But I have had to admit to myself that I am not sexually fulfilled. We live with our choices. David made his to end his life. I made mine to live as a heterosexual. David could not go back. Neither could I without hurting many people I love.

This story has been a salute to whom David might have been. He deserved better than he got from life.

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