This story isall over the place and so non-canonit makes my little black heart grow like the grinch's. I hope you like this big ball of fluff I've got here. xxxKrissy

Geana knew her daughter was gay; it was something always in the back of her mind. She remembered exactly when the thought first crossed her mind and many times after that too. It was always there, in the back of her mind, reminding her always to be careful of Tara's feelings.

She was only sixteen, and it was a cruel word out there to everyone who was different. Words like queer and homo and dyke existed in a world that should know better but didn't.

People were assholes, even in your own family. Kelsey was different than Tara and younger by almost two years. Kelsey had already had a boyfriend or two, while Tara concentrated on school and grades, which didn't come as easily to her as to Kelsey.

Somehow Geana just knew. It wasn't just because she was concentrating on school, as Geana's mother always said. Grandma Gallagher didn't have a clue, but Geana did.

When Tara was in kindergarten a classmate's mother approached her at the back to school night and said her son had a crush on Tara.

"He just loves her beautiful long hair." The woman had said to Geana.

If it had been Kelsey, she would have run home in excitement to tell her mother about this boy, because according to the mother, he made no secret about how he felt. Tara didn't say a word to Geana at all.

When she asked Tara about him that night, Tara just shrugged.

Geana took note of that, and it was the first time she thought to herself, maybe. And it was ok with her; she just wanted Tara to be happy.

Her ex husband was a jerk on the best of days and when he remarked at her friend Richard's funeral that 'He got what was coming to him' because he was gay and died from PCP pneumonia, a common complication associated with AIDS, Geana knew she needed to make a plan.

It took her a few years, but she got their freedom on a cold February day, and for the most part, they were ok now, better than they ever could be with him.

When Tara was twelve, and Kelsey was ten, she packed them up in the middle of the night and left him. Although he lived just a few towns away, Keith didn't see his children ever. He had remarried some blonde floozy with four children all under the age of ten.

Tara and Kelsey didn't understand, and maybe they didn't care, but the three of them were making a life for themselves in a lovely little town.

Geana's house was always full of kids, and that was just how she liked it. He would have never allowed that either, and Geana suspected the girls knew that.

On any given day they would have two or three extra kids for dinner and the weekends were always filled with fun and laughter.

Tara was a theater kid and sang in the chorus as did most of her friends, and as cliché as it was, a few of them made no secret of their sexual orientation.

Geana welcomed them all into her home with open arms and sometimes cried at the stories some of them told her about their families not accepting them.

She accepted all of them and if they came over at night and she was asleep it wasn't uncommon for her to be woken up by four or five teenagers jumping into her bed. She was like the gayden mother of the town,and all the kids loved her, and she them, every one of them.

Tara's and Kelsey's friends came over every New Year's Eve for her sober party, and they chose to come to her house and do the Time Warp in her living room, instead of going out and getting drunk or into trouble.

Life was good for them, after years of sadness that she tried to hide from her girls, but they saw it and now they knew the difference.

It was October, the weekend before they had all dressed up and gone to Rocky Horror and then the kids all camped out in the living room. Her ex-husband would have a stroke if she knew she let boys stay over too, but she didn't answer to him anymore. Tara's best friend Chris was a boy, and he was allowed to sleep in her room if he needed a place to crash to get away from his family.

He was respectful of Tara and clearly not interested in her that way. Chris liked boys, and the absent, judgmental father would have never stood for that.

Geana was upstairs in the loft of the house where she had made a little office for herself. She was back in school, trying to finish college, gradually and working full time now to make the bills. She heard Tara come in and she called down hello to her.

Usually, Tara would say "Hi Mom" and go to the kitchen in search of food, but she didn't this time.

"Can you come down Mom? I need to talk to you." Geana picked her head up out of the textbook she had been reading and looked over the ledge of the loft at her daughter in the foyer.

This isit Geana; she's going to tell you. Geana thought to herself.

"Be right there sweetie." And then she went downstairs and sat next to her daughter on the stairs.

"I have to tell you something, but it's hard," Tara murmured.

Geana took her child's hand in hers. "You can tell me anything, and it will never change us or how I feel about you. No matter what it is. I will always love you."

"I…think…I..."

Just say it, Tara thought to herself.

"I think I like girls."

"I know honey."

Tara looked up at her with a funny expression on her face, somewhere between disbelief and shock. "You do?"

Geana nodded. Tara didn't say anything for a few minutes and then she spoke carefully.

"Is that why you left Dad?"

"What do you mean?" Geana thought she had hidden all of that from them and it was shocking to her that she hadn't been as careful as she thought.

"Come on Mom; I know about all the crap he used to say about Uncle Richard." Richard had been such a good friend to Geana, much to Keith's dismay, that her children called him Uncle Richard.

"You do?"

Tara nodded. "He would never have accepted me; you knew that, didn't you?"

Geana didn't get a chance to answer her because Kelsey was busting through the door in all of her usual teenage fanfare. She stopped short in the hallway when she saw her mother and sister sitting on the stairs.

"Everything ok?"

"Talking about Keith," Tara said.

"Oh fuck him," Kelsey replied as she dropped her backpack on the floor. "You ok Tar?"

"I told her."

"Told her what?" Kelsey asked.

"It," Tara said with her eyes full and wide and then Kelsey got it.

"And let me guess, she knew already?"

Tara nodded.

"Told you. Mom isn't dumb, even if you insisted on being so far in the closet you were almost to Narnia, can we go to Taco Bell?"