Chapter 41
COLE
Istand as Mrs. A comes into the living room. Her eyes are suspiciously bright. Her nose is red, and she has a Kleenex stuffed up the sleeve of her cardigan sweater. But she smiles as she crosses the room, and she takes a seat on the couch beside Mr. A.
“I’m sorry about that,” she says. “My allergies get the better of me this time of year.”
Her allergies. And my springing Kate on her, without a word of warning.
It was a stupid thing to do. Cruel. Mrs. A noted the rings on Kate’s finger before we entered the living room. My wedding band might as well have been a twenty-foot billboard: “I got married and didn’t invite you to the wedding.”
As willing as I am to cut the throat of any business rival in the world, it makes me sick to think I’ve hurt Mrs. A. Mr. A too. He’s just better at hiding his feelings.
“Evan,” Mrs. A says to her husband. “This calls for a celebration. Why don’t you get that bottle of champagne in the fridge?”
I take a step toward the kitchen, willing to help, but Mr. A points me back to Kate’s side. “I’ll just be a minute,” he says. “Don’t leave your bride on my account.”
I glance at Kate, to see how she’s handling all this. I’ve seen her prickly—in every interaction she’s ever had with me. I’ve seen her concerned—whenever she’s visiting her grandmother.
But this Kate is new to me. Part of it is the intriguing expanse of pale skin across her chest, her decision to erase the furious message she scrawled for our wedding day. But part of it is…something I can’t put my finger on. Something I can’t name.
Then I have it.
She cares. She wants to impress the Andersons. She wants them to like her.
And that fact makes me appreciate my wife more than anything else I’ve learned about her in the past two weeks.
“So,” Mrs. A says gamely. “Tell me how you two met.”
From the widening of Kate’s eyes, she doesn’t know how to respond. I threw champagne in his face in front of a hundred wedding guests will make her sound unhinged. And she clearly doesn’t want Mrs. A to think less of her.
But here’s the secret Kate doesn’t know yet: The Andersons know how to forgive. Even though I’ve disappointed them more times than I care to remember, the door to this house is always open to me. There is literally nothing I could do that would make the Andersons turn me away.
Now that Kate’s my wife, she gets the same benefit of the doubt.
I take her hand, lacing our fingers together. “We attended the wedding of mutual friends, up in Boston.”
Mrs. A likes that answer. She can trowel in romance to fill all the gaps in my story.
She eyes Kate’s ring finger, her gaze lingering over the diamond I put there.
It’s a massive extravagance for a guy working an entry level job at Hamilton Corporation.
Mrs. A sounds more than a bit concerned when she asks, “And did you have a long engagement?”
Ouch. Just when I let myself think Mrs. A is a sweet little old lady, she delivers a knife-sharp blow. Beneath her polite, smiling question she’s delivered a tongue-lashing worse than anything Shannon ever managed.
I have two possible responses, and they’re both disasters.
Either Kate and I were engaged for a long time and I never told the Andersons, ignoring the nearly twenty years they’ve stood in the place of my parents.
Or Kate and I got married on the spur of the moment, ignoring my carefully structured life after prison, my fictitious well-laid plans to keep my nose clean, and my supposed career trajectory.
Kate answers while I’m still weighing my options. “It’s been a whirlwind romance,” she says. “And it all started because I spilled a glass of champagne on Cole.”
Cole. I stiffen like a foxhound on the hunt. Kate has never said my name before.
Mr. A comes in from the kitchen, balancing four juice glasses on a tray. “You spilled a glass at a wedding!” he says, laughing at Kate’s confession. “Maybe we shouldn’t trust you with a toast!”
Kate says, “No worries. I never make the same mistake twice.”
We all laugh as Mr. A distributes the juice glasses. I make a mental note to give them champagne flutes next Christmas.
Mr. A clears his throat before he raises his drink.
“Cole, son, you’ve surprised me from the very first day you showed up in coding class.
I know I speak for Linda too, when I say this is the best surprise you’ve ever brought us.
Welcome, Kate. We know you and Cole will have many happy years together.
We hope you’ll never be a stranger to us. Cheers!”
“Cheers,” Mrs. A echoes. All four of us clink glasses.
“So,” Mrs. A says, and I should have realized her questions were only beginning. I also should have expected her to direct her attention to Kate. Mrs. A always wants to make people at home. “Did Hamilton give our boy time off for a honeymoon?”
It takes an effort not to wince. I don’t know if Kate will think Hamilton is a person—my supposed boss—or if she’ll conclude I’m supposed to work for a corporation. Either way, I regret not filling her in on my made-up life before we arrived.
I shouldn’t have worried, though. Kate leans forward like she’s sharing a secret. “You know what they say,” she stage whispers. “No rest for the wicked.”
Mrs. A gives me an appraising look. “And this one is definitely wicked.”
“Wait a second!” I pretend to be aggrieved.
Mrs. A ignores me. “Is that an Irish accent I hear?” she asks Kate. “Where are your people from?”
“Most recently, Baltimore. My father owns a construction company there.”
I tense, wondering if the Andersons will recognize construction company as code for mob-owned business. But Mrs. A sails on, oblivious. “And before Baltimore?”
“County Donegal,” Kate says with a touch of pride.
An alarm rings in the kitchen, and Mrs. A jumps to her feet. “That will be the chocolate cobbler.”
“Chocolate cobbler!” Kate says, as if someone’s just awarded her a pony. “My favorite.”
That’s news to me. It occurs to me I should know my wife’s favorite dessert.
It also occurs to me that I should come up with a diversion immediately, if I’m going to keep Kate from following Mrs. A into the kitchen.
It’ll be a landmine in there. There are too many things I haven’t explained to Kate, too many secrets I’ve kept buried.
I’m a different man here at the Andersons’ house.
It was a mistake bringing her here today.
But it doesn’t feel like a mistake when I hear Kate laugh—actually laugh—from the kitchen.
And it doesn’t feel like a mistake when Mrs. A says something in a confiding tone.
It doesn’t even feel like a mistake when Mr. A says, “I know you’re far too old for me to give you a lecture on treating a woman right. ”
Evan Anderson would need CPR if he ever found out how I treat my women. But I tell him, “I’ve watched you with Mrs. A. You’ve taught me a lot about how to be a good husband.”
And he has. I just haven’t had a chance to apply that knowledge, because Kate and I aren’t really married.
We’re partners in a business transaction.
I landed a client when I needed a new one.
She got out from under her father’s thumb—with expert medical care for her grandmother tossed in for good measure.
That’s it. That’s all we share.
Well, that, and a mutual taste for my dungeon.
Not enough to build a real marriage. Not enough to last for decades, the way the Andersons have done.
My answer has embarrassed Mr. A. It’s embarrassed me too, admitting to how broken I am, how I didn’t have a clue what a normal family could look like before the Andersons brought me home, gave me a meal, and folded me into their lives.
“How do you think the Nationals look this year?” Mr. A asks.
“You can never have enough starting pitching,” I say. Years ago, I learned that answer works for any baseball question, whether a team is good or bad. My response works its usual magic; Mr. A goes on about the team until Mrs. A calls us in to dinner.
We sit down to industrial-size vats of pot roast and potatoes and carrots. There’s a green salad and a plate of pickles and a basket of hot rolls that look—and taste—homemade.
After grace, Mrs. A tells a story about looking for Irish butter once at the local supermarket.
She spins it out for laughs—she recruited other shoppers, summoned a cashier, and finally brought in a manager who climbed into a freezer looking for Kerrygold.
She paints a vivid picture of the poor man’s legs dangling above the frozen foods.
I chuckle—obligingly at first, then giving way to a full belly laugh.
For the rest of the meal, Mr. and Mrs. A do their best to learn more about my wife.
Kate has figured out that I’m supposed to work for a defense contractor.
She gives herself a job with the Baltimore Public Schools—a mid-level coder, which would be a brilliant occupation except Mr. A wants to know if she’s ever met any of his friends in the field.
Kate deflects the questions easily. She recognizes one of the names, but they’ve never met in person. She’s never met the other folks, but that’s probably because she works out of the regional office up in Timonium.
I wonder if there is a regional office in Timonium, but if there isn’t, Kate seems to have hit on a believable lie. It doesn’t take her long to turn the conversation to the robotics club, which keep us all occupied through the rest of dinner, dessert, and coffee.
Kate and I offer to do dishes, but Mrs. A won’t hear of our taking over her kitchen.
Instead, we head out a few minutes after Mr. A catches his first yawn against the back of his teeth.
Kate gets kisses on the cheek from both Andersons.
I get the usual cheek-kiss from Mrs. A and a brisk one-arm hug from Mr. A.
Kate shakes her head as I pull the Camry away from the curb. “You certainly have the two of them wrapped around your little finger.”