Chapter 15 Dinah
Dinah
I don’t know what normal married couples talk about at dinner, but I imagine the meal stretches on interminably.
One spouse picks up their phone, the other follows suit, and the silence is filled with short video clips, the quiet tap of fingers against glass, the chime of points being scored on an app.
Occasionally, the clink of silverware against china, the murmur of a question— Do you want another glass of wine?
Need more potatoes? Does the chicken seem dry?
Then at some point, the event ends. One person rises to carry their plate to the sink, the other follows.
I don’t ever want that. It’s important to me that we are a linked pair, tied to each other with our love and our secrets.
A relationship should have consequences upon dissolution.
The steeper the consequences, the stronger the connection.
For Joe and me, either of us could drown the other with just a few words, and that awareness heightens the frequency of the electricity between us.
Now, over our dinner of roast duck and wild rice, our attention rarely strays from each other.
Conversation flows back and forth quickly, each of us anxious to reply to the other, our words often rushing together as we finish each other’s sentences and, just as often, burst into laughter.
We discuss a novel we are both reading, the stray cat who keeps lingering around, and the new chardonnay we picked up last week.
We hem and haw over whether to see a play that is opening next weekend and whether we should fire our pest exterminator.
We are in love with being in love, and we have been this way going on a decade.
It is, as my mother says, an enigma. Couples don’t stay in love, she preaches. It’s a lot of work, she declares.
It isn’t a lot of work. It’s fun. He’s the best part of my life, and I’m the best part of his. It’s not by accident; it’s because I strive to make it so. I work my ass off to be the best part of his day, every day, without fail.
Joe asks how work is going, and I tell him bits and pieces of my week, strategically avoiding the mention of the clingy trainee, whom I will aggressively push back to Ron on Monday.
By then, he should be released from the hospital and back at home.
Freddie isn’t worth mentioning to Joe, because his involvement will be over in a matter of days.
Just one or two more meetups, and then we’ll be done.
The chief will sign off on Reese Bishop’s suicide, and the daughter will become just one more missing girl in a city that swallows them for breakfast.
I ask Joe about his classes and his students, and he tells me a funny story about a campus parking attendant. We talk about the center and a few patients he’s struggling with.
We discuss this upcoming weekend and our plans to spend it at the farm. We have a new mower that he’ll use on the fields. I want to work in the greenhouse and have a crochet throw I plan on curling up in the hammock with and finishing.
As we talk, warmth fills my chest. Is it wrong to swoon at our age?
We don’t do the dishes; I used paper plates, so we dump them into the trash. Then he heads to the clinic and I escape to my office, where I pull up the DA’s response to my inquiry.
She granted access to SMED.
I enter my credentials and dive into Jessica Bishop’s private life.