Intermezzo

Love conquers all, people say. But when love goes wrong, it can wound and sometimes the wound just will not heal.

A man returns to his old hometown seeking peace. But an unexpected sexual encounter with a teenage boy sends him back to the city he'd fled. Yet he still continues to be haunted by what occurred there. Memories arise-memories long since buried, though never deep enough-of another hometown boy who'd been his first love. It was love of a kind-heated and erratic as the boyish blood behind it-that must leave its mark. Just how much of a mark the man is about to discover during a snowy winter's night of rooting through old things and even older regrets.

"Intermezzo," the continuation of "In Hospital" a story that appeared in Mr. Frary's inaugural collection, "An Omen in the Bone," further explores a theme central to both works: What happens to a life when the past refuses to stay.past?