We fell in to a pattern of sorts over the next few weeks. Every morning Abraham and I dropped the kids off at school and then went and grabbed breakfast from the diner. After that, he either dropped me back off at the house before going out to the bar to do paperwork or I went with him, taking my laptop and setting up at one of the booths while he handled inventory or the order or some other aspect of his business. In the afternoon, we picked up the kids, went home, and did homework before Abraham went back to work. I’d put the kids to bed, work on research for the next issue, and wait for Abraham. Friday nights we went to football games—Abraham had finally found someone he trusted enough to leave in charge at the bar when he wasn’t there—and then dropped the kids off at the house before staying the night at his apartment. Saturdays were playdates and chores. Sundays were church and then an afternoon of nothing.

After a month, it was hard to imagine I’d ever spent my time doing anything else. Or that I’d wanted to spend my time doing anything else.

I made it through the first round of parent-teacher conferences without having a nervous breakdown, although I did have a shot or two to settle my nerves when they were finished. As I’d suspected, Tammy worked hard and got steady grades but nothing flashy, Dolly coasted along but would probably make honor roll if she spent half as much time on schoolwork as she did on making up stories, and Conway would wind up skipping kindergarten and possibly first grade. The only reasons I held back there were his budding friendship with Jamie and the fact Miss Suzie Q was nothing short of fantastic.

Kitty made it through the first two weeks before going in to premature labor, giving birth to a healthy baby girl who weighed just shy of nine pounds. She’d waffled for a few days over whether or not to go the adoption route before finally deciding it was best for both the baby and her. She’d been weepy and mopey for a few days once she came home from the hospital but she’d started perking up when she went back to the school.

Beth and I had a standing lunch date on Wednesdays and always shared a few drinks of Friday night after the game. Dana managed to join us for lunch but not drinks and somehow it was never as awkward as I thought it would be. Every now and then one of them would say something which brought a stumbling halt to the conversation but for the most part we were doing good at forging a friendship of sorts.

Overall, things were good. Life was good.

But I still hadn’t said those three words Abraham wanted me to say.

He said them, all the time. Every morning. Every night. Randomly throughout the day. Always casually.

And it wasn’t just that he said them. He showed them. I don’t know when I mentioned how much I loved tiger lilies but I came downstairs one morning and there was a bouquet on the hall table. I hated Dolly’s math homework—more out of principle than because it was difficult—so five nights a week he sat down with her and helped her struggle through long division and multiplication and whatever the hell else was on the dozens of worksheets she brought home. Every Sunday, he went to church with us, because even though he wasn’t big on religion and neither was I, Tammy was.

He made the kids happy. He made me happy.

And yet.

And yet.

I was in the middle of mulling the situation over yet ago when Beth plopped down in the booth across from me, somehow managing to nearly poke me in the eye with her oversized sun hat. “Honey, you look as forlorn as a pack of wet cats stuck on a rock in the middle of the river.”

“Okay, now I know you had to have made that one up.”

“Well, yes, but it’s good, isn’t it?” She pulled off her hat and set it on the booth next to her, fluffing her hair up and smoothing her dress down. After a month of friendship, I’d discovered what I always thought of as preening was really just habitual grooming, so much so that Beth did most of it without even thinking. Beaming at me, she said, “Besides, it’s the truth. When I walked in, I would have sworn I saw a little raincloud hanging over your head.”

“Oh, I’m not that bad.” I slumped down in my seat, resisting the urge to hunch my shoulders. I couldn’t, however, keep from frowning. “And what if I am? It’s Wednesday. Wednesdays are blah days. You’re allowed to be moody on a blah day.”

“Well, I won’t argue with you about how horrible Wednesdays are, although I’m inclined to hate them because it’s the day I have to drive Ronnie over to Slisdel for ballet even though the poor girl has two left feet and is going to wind up more top heavy than me.” She broke off when our usual server brought over her coffee, handing Josie the menu and saying, “Oh, whatever, honey, surprise me. We’re having ourselves a pity party about the sad state of affairs that’s Wednesday and I just can’t make any major decisions right now.”

“Right.” Josie accepted the menu and the airy, over the top instruction with her usual stoic manner, turning to me with pencil and notepad in hand. “You being adventurous today, too, or sticking with the usual?”

“Biscuits and gravy, country potatoes, eggs over easy.” I’d planned on getting a waffle the way I always did but something about her comment irked me enough to have me changing my breakfast order even though I knew I’d regret it later. The sausage at the diner was hot enough to burn a hole through the most stalwart of stomachs and even though I’d always considered mine cast iron I wasn’t ashamed to admit in this case I was wrong. When Josie trudged away, her thick rubber soled shoes making a squeaking sound on the linoleum, I said, “Tell me you have some Tums on you.”

“I do but you and I both know it’s going to take more than some drugstore antacid to help you recover from Spencer Joe’s sausage.” Beth picked up her coffee and took a long sip, shuddering as the caffeine hit her system. “So, what bug’s crawled up your butt this morning?”

“You’ve been with Ben since we were... what? Fourteen, fifteen?”

“Officially, yes, although I like to remind him I told him when we were in first grade that I was going to marry him and damned if I didn’t do exactly that.” She set her cup down and leaned forward, resting her arms on the table and steepling her fingers under her chin. Somehow, she managed to scrunch her nose and widen her eyes at the same time, saying, “Are you trying to hint to me that I should be listening for wedding bells because, honey, the entire town has had their ears perked up for the last two weeks.”

“What?” I could all but feel the color drain from my face and if I’d been standing up there was a good chance I would have toppled face planted right on the floor. “What? No. That’s not what I said. Or implied. Or even wondered about under the influence of copious amounts of alcohol.”

“Calm down, Jeannie, there’s no need to panic.” And yet the gleam in her eyes made me think there was, in fact, a very large need to panic. “You may not have been in Cotton Creek in a while but you know how the town works and you have to admit, you and Abraham Hansom are definitely front page news.”

“Why, because he grew up on a fucking plantation and I grew up in a two bedroom trailer on the other side of the train tracks?”

“Uh, no.” Beth blinked and sat back. “Because you’re stupidly successful and you bought the old Fisher place and you tell people to go to hell as easily as most people breathe and Abraham runs a bar and restores cars when he’s bored and both of you look as if you should be doing photoshoots for ‘casual, cool, sophisticated couple slumming it in backwater town’.” She drummed her fingers on the table and frowned. “Now, not to be rude but where the hell did that statement come from?”

“I’d blame hormones and say I’m on my period but that’s insulting to your intelligence and mine—to the entire gender, really.” I pushed my glass from right to left and back, watching it leave a condensation trail on the cheap plastic laminate and putting off the inevitable. “Let’s just say this town really did a number on my self-esteem and every time I think I’ve gotten past it... well, I find out I didn’t.”

“Oh.” She drew the single syllable out to nearly ten, her eyes going even wider as she nodded knowingly. “Yeah, I can see how that would make you go from zero to bitch in the blink of an eye.” She crossed her arms and nodded again. “Every now and then, Ben will say something that reminds me of Lynn and it takes everything I have not to kick his balls up in to his throat.”

“Oh.” It was my turn to widen my eyes and I dropped my hands to my lap, wiping my wet palms on my jeans. “Ah, congratulations on not following through. I guess.”

“Oh, it’s fine. Even if I did it, he’d know I didn’t mean it.” She rolled her eyes and chuckled. “Lynn always had to be the best, you know what I mean? She had to be the skinniest and the blondest and the most popular. The only thing she wasn’t good at was getting Abraham to notice her, although in hindsight I guess it’s easy to see why she failed there.” She shrugged, shifting restlessly in her seat. “I know we were mean to you—hell, we were mean to everyone—but she was just as mean to me and Dana. And after she got pregnant and her entire life went downhill, she just got meaner.”

“Is that why you’re not friends anymore?”

“It’s funny. I was able to put up with her being horrible to me but when she started being horrible to my baby....” Dana trailed off, clucking her tongue and shaking her head. “That was the line. I told her when she’s ready to stop being miserable, she knew where to find me. That’s been about fourteen years.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t really have friends growing up—or ever, if I’m being honest—but I have to imagine making a decision like that wasn’t easy.” I found myself twisting my hands in my lap and immediately stopped, annoyed with myself. “And I hope you can imagine why it’s hard for me to believe people are actually being friendly and want to be friends.”

“Honey, if I’d grown up the way you did and been on the receiving end of the same amount of bullshit, it would have taken a lot more than somebody dying to get me to throw my life in to a tailspin and put down roots here.” She reached across the table, laying her hand on my arm and squeezing once. Sitting back, she said, “Now, if I’m going to start doling out relationship advice, I think I deserve at least a hint or three about the no doubt mind blowing sex the two of you have to be having.”

––––––––

LATER THAT NIGHT, I squinted as the light flashed on in the bathroom, rolling to my back and using the flat of my hand to block the worst of the glare. “Abraham?”

“Yeah, sorry. Go back to sleep.”

The numbers on the bedside clock were blurry but still readable. “It’s almost four.”

“Had a little trouble getting people to close their tabs and get the hell out and then when they did I was stuck cleaning up the mess.” He paused in the threshold between the bedroom and the bathroom, the light from the latter throwing him in shadow. “I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

“It’s fine.” I struggled to a sitting position, shoving my hair out of my face. “What’s wrong?”

“It was a long night, Jeannie.” He stripped over his clothes, tossing them in the direction of the hamper before killing the light and padding across the room to the bed. Climbing in on the opposite side, he stretched out on his back and sighed. “Let’s just go to sleep, okay?”

“What’s wrong?”

“Maybe I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Then maybe you shouldn’t have come in slamming doors and throwing on lights.” I would have been more than happy to go back to sleep and ignore the fight that was brewing under the surface but something told me he was upset about more than a bad night at work. Turning to face him, I said, “You can either tell me what’s wrong or we can have a good, old-fashioned shouting match and we’ll both look like shit in the morning when we take the kids to school.”

“One of the guys we went to high school with, you may not remember him, Julian Pomeroy, he came in to the bar tonight.”

I waited for him to continue. When he didn’t, I lifted my brows and widened my eyes. “And?”

“He got engaged last week. And I got an invitation to Elliot Greenway’s co-ed baby shower in the mail yesterday.” He sat up, the filmy curtains thick enough to block the light, keeping everything in half darkness. “I thought I was happy with the family we have. I thought it was enough. But it’s not.”

“Oh.” Even to my own ears, my voice sounded curiously flat. “Well.” I started to slide out of the bed, freezing when he grabbed my arm. “Abraham, I like to think I’m a relatively mature adult but I’m not mature enough to sleep in the same bed with you after you’ve told me you want to break up.”

“That I want to....” He trailed off, staring at me as if I’d grown a second head. “Why would you think... Jeannie, I don’t want to break up with you.” He shifted, reaching behind him and opening the drawer of his bedside table, pulling out something and all but tossing it in my lap. “I want to marry you, damnit, and I was trying to wait and be patient but I can’t.”

“What?” I croaked out the single word, staring at the small black box in my lap as if it was a rattlesnake. “What?”

“I’m not speaking fucking French, Jeannie.” Picking up the box, he fumbled it open one handed, the ring throwing off a dull glint. “I want to marry you and share this family with you and maybe add a few more members to it.”

“I think I’m going to pass out.” That had to be the reason why my stomach was pitching and the room was starting to spin. I flopped backward on the mattress, staring at the ceiling and willing everything to stay in place. “Why on earth would you want to marry me?”

“You want a goddamn list?” He dropped the box on my stomach and started ticking off points on his fingers. “You’re brilliant, you’re beautiful, you’re the best fucking thing that’s ever happened to me in my entire life.” He dragged one hand through his hair and huffed out a breath. “Okay, I may have consolidated a few points there because if I were to actually list all the reasons why you’re amazing and I want to marry you, we’d be here all night and half of tomorrow.”

“Abraham, I grew up in a trailer with subpar plumbing.”

“And I grew up in a plantation house with subpar parents.”

“One of my parents drank herself to death and the other is God knows where and my sister shot her husband and hung herself not even three months ago.”

“My great-great-great granddaddy was a bootlegger and his daddy was a Klan member.” Abraham snorted. “And don’t even get me started on my mother’s side of the family.”

“I’m not the kind of person who gets married.” Mostly because I’d never even considered the possibility that somebody would want to marry me. Now that there was somebody, I didn’t know what the hell to do. “Abraham, it’s been a month.”

“When you know, you know, and I swear, some part of me has known my entire life that you were the one.” He stretched out next to me, propping his chin in the palm of his head, starting down at me. “Maybe you can just try it on for a little while, see how it feels? Who knows, maybe it won’t be nearly as terrifying as you seem to think.”

“Abraham....” I sighed, knowing it was a stupid idea—because once it was on my hand, there was no way Abraham was letting me take it off without a fight—and knowing I was going to give in anyway. Abraham liked to joke that I had him wrapped around his finger and while it might have been the case he wasn’t the only one who had difficulty saying ‘no’. “Fine. But I haven’t agreed to anything. I’m just trying it on.”

“That’s all I’m asking right now.” He waited while I eased the ring out of the box and slid it on my finger. “How’s it feel?”

“Heavy.” Both physically—I wasn’t an expert on diamonds but this one looked and felt like a whopper—and emotionally. I set the box on my bedside table and sighed. “Weird. Unsettling.”

“But not bad.” He rolled to his back, tugging me over until I curled against his side, one leg slung over his. “Right?”

“Not bad.” I ran my thumb over the band, wondering idly when the nausea and dizziness had passed. “Not bad at all.”