During the course of the meal, a topic arose that grabbed Jon's attention. They were talking about some new neighbors moving in just down the street.
"It's disgusting how those people live," his second mother said. "Heterosexuality is a sin. Those people should be ashamed of themselves."
Yeah, definitely different.
"Are you sure they were heterosexual?" Jon's mom asked.
"I saw them when they were moving in. They kissed each other. And on the back of their car, I saw a bumper sticker. It was one of those light blue and pink ones with the male and female symbols interlocking. With the message 'Love is Love'. Ugh. Those people are so perverted. Women are supposed to be with women and men are supposed to be with men. It's always been that way."
"Always?" Jon asked.
"Jon, I hope you're not implying that you don't pay attention at church," his second mother said.
In his own reality, Jon only attended church on special occasions, like Christmas and Easter. But it seemed that he went to church far more often in this reality, probably every week. Maybe that accounted for Zoe's toned down "gothness".
"Can I go now?" Zoe asked, groaning.
"Sure, honey," Jon's mom said and Zoe was suddenly leaving the table and heading upstairs to her room. Jon got the sense that she didn't like going to church, even if their second mother insisted on it.
"I think I'm done too," Jon said, pushing his plate. "But it was really good."
"Thanks, sweetie," his mom said, smiling.
"Yeah, honey, it was really good. You know you should become a professional chef," Jon's second mother said.
His mom laughed and sat down on her wife's lap, putting her arm around the woman, then giving her a brief kiss on her lips. "I'm good, but I don't think I'm that good."
There was that weirdness again that Jon felt before. Maybe it was just being used to seeing his mom kissing his dad. He never imagined her kissing anyone else, let alone another woman. But he had to remind himself that this was normal here. There nothing uncommon or perverted about it. It was just the way things were.
Jon excused himself from the table, then headed back to his room, stopping only briefly in the living room to pick up a Bible that he saw on a bookcase. Once he was back in his room, he opened the "good book" up and looked for differences. The first number of verses of Genesis were the same, how the universe was created, the sun, moon, sea, sky, land, animals and all that stuff, but once he got to Chapter 2 Verse 18, everything started to deviate from what he was familiar with in his own reality.
