For more than forty years she had made her home in a tidy stucco house on the outskirts of downtown Austin, Texas. In the years since her husband’s death, she had lived alone with her cat Missy. Though she wore the kind of cat’s-eye-shaped lenses favored by her generation, she missed nothing. And while her vision was not 20/20, she had no difficulty seeing the good in people. She put her “live and let live” philosophy into practice when she found out the “nice boys” across the street were more than just roommates. Ray Watson and Tom Agnello were gay lovers, and though the Bible told her homosexuality was wrong, Paton set judgment aside. After all, they had been so kind, helping her with her yard work. She was sorry to see them leave when they moved to San Antonio in 1981. The old neighbors kept in touch, and in 1983 Paton learned that Watson had had what Agnello called a heart attack, and died. It was during the summer of that same year that Paton first heard of Eli and Danny Stutzman.
