Don’t Look Behind You

services to see two of his friends—brothers—who owned a truck stop in Algona, Washington.
    “I was shocked to see my dad cry in front of them,” Nick says. “I’d never seen him cry before. I know that Kandy put him through a lot when she was involved in drugs when she was younger. Some of his friends in Kent—where he went to have coffee—had talked to him then about getting her some help, but he didn’t agree with them. I remember one of his closest acquaintances had lost his daughter in an accident. This guy was the mayor of Kent at the time, and he tried to get my dad to do whatever it took to get Kandy off drugs—but my dad said he believed in tough love.”
    In Kandy Hansen’s case, toughness wasn’t what was missing in her life. She had needed soft, nurturing love all of her life and rarely found it.
    Ty feels that he was the one who missed Kandy the most after she died. They had always been close, about the only family members who were always there for each other. And with Kandy gone, Ty felt all alone.
    Ty was doing fairly well painting used cars and repairing rental cars at a garage on Pacific Highway. But an acquaintance talked him into moving on and having his own business at a “great spot” further south that was going to be for rent.
    Ty was twenty-six when he got his dealer’s license, and he was selling used cars and making good money when a stranger out of Arizona walked in one day and said he wanted to join Ty as a partner. It sounded promising at first. Phil Hallop* said he would handle the books and come up with all the ads, publicity, and whatever stunts might be needed to bring in customers. And Ty, who had attended community college in a nearby town, taking auto mechanics courses, would be in charge of all the car maintenance and mechanical problems.
    One of the Arizona glad-hander’s ideas was to have Ty dress in a white cowboy suit, mask, boots, and ten-gallon hat so prospective buyers would see his resemblance to the Lone Ranger. This wasn’t an original idea with Hallop; he had seen a car lot use it effectively in Phoenix. He figured that he could steal the gimmick since Washington and Arizona were far apart.
    So Ty Hansen—not experienced with glib con men—agreed. With his height, he was a natural at portraying anhonest-looking Western hero. His schtick was his nickname: “the Loan Arranger.”
    Ty soon became a semicelebrity in the Seattle area, and small children gazed at him in wonder as their parents shopped for an almost-new car or truck.
    But Ty got in too deep when he trusted his partner’s handling of the books. He was shocked to find that they didn’t have anywhere near as much in the bank as he’d been led to believe. Within a few months, Ty Hansen’s business was in trouble, and he fired Phil Hallop. A month later, someone broke into the car lot office and stole all of Ty’s files. He realized it was Hallop when he later threatened to blackmail Ty.
    “I’d bitten off far more than I could chew,” Ty admits today.
    He lost his business license and felt he had little choice but to leave Washington and start over. He moved to California and then Oregon.
    In Oregon, Ty soon started seeing a young divorced woman who had a small daughter, Sylvie.* His new family changed his life. They married and soon had another daughter, Brigette.*
    Nick was still dating Melissa. He loved her, but he remained torn by his sense that he should have been born a female. Before he asked Melissa to marry him, he knew he had to be totally honest with her.
    “I told her everything,” he remembers. “And she accepted me as I was. I married her because she was the only one I’d ever known who gave me unconditional love—who didn’t judge me.”
    Ty stood up as best man for his brother, Bob beamed proudly beside them, and Melissa made a lovely bride. Nick isn’t sure what year they got married, but he knows it was in the late eighties or early nineties.
    They soon had two daughters—Robyn* and Terri*—and they were both delighted with their girls. Like Ty, Nick adored his daughters.
    “But the unconditional love from Melissa didn’t last,” Nick says. “It grew more and more conditional. I think Melissa might have thought I would change, but I couldn’t. Being married didn’t take away my fantasies. Loving my little girls didn’t either. Inside, I still felt like a woman.”
    Nick never blamed Melissa, realizing that they each meant their marriage vows at their