“How is Jo?” John asked.
“Oh. Well.” I blinked at him, distracted. “John, she slept with Eric.”
“The chef guy? Good for her.”
“I’ve always wanted Jo to find somebody.” Automatically, I reached for the laundry basket. “But he’s so much older than she is. Divorced. With two kids. Not to mention he’s her boss.”
“Do I need to go to New York and beat him up?” He was smiling. Half-serious. I knew Jo privately considered my husband kind of dull, but he was a good man. Protective. And he’d always been fond of Jo.
“All I want is to take care of you,”he’d said.“You and the kids.”
I folded his briefs in thirds. “She says not. She came on to him, she says.” Poor Jo.
“That doesn’t sound like your sister.”
I reached for a nightshirt, keeping my hands busy while I told John the rest, slowly relaxing into my sister’s tale. It was nice, talking about something besides our schedules and the twins. Like the old days, when we’d critique our friends’ romances and congratulate ourselves on how lucky we were.
“Then last night they had a big fight about her blog, and she quit,” I concluded.
John folded a T-shirt in half and then in half again, the way he did before we got married, and put it on the pile. “Bad move.”
“It takes two people to make a relationship work,” I said.
He grunted, his big hands painstakingly matching the twins’ tiny socks, butterflies with butterflies, stripes with stripes. A wave of tenderness caught me by the throat. “Seems to me this chef guy needs to get over himself.”
“Just like that,” I said skeptically.
“Did she trash his restaurant on her blog?”
“No.”
“Post naked pictures?”
A laugh spurted out of me. “No!”
“Then it’s easy. If he loves her.”
“I thought he did,”Jo had said.“But he didn’t want me.”
“She’s hurt,” I said.
“So she ran.”
“You think she should have stayed in New York.”
“If she loves him, yeah. You have feelings for somebody, that’s what you do. You stick around. You work things out. You don’t give up.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Put your head down and bull through?”
“That’s what I’d do,” John said.
That’s what hedid. Solid, uncomplaining, utterly reliable John. I loved him so much. “I think they should talk,” I said. Testing.
“Maybe. Maybe he just needs time to cool off.”
“Or Jo does.” I sighed. “I’m worried she’s going to end up all alone.”
“She’s not alone.” John glanced up from the laundry, a smile in his eyes. “She has you.”
