“Same reason as you.”
Afraid of marriage? Me? Who has managed a good job, a great condo, and single motherhood without a husband, thank you? I remember the discussion we had, Jack and me, about power and control. I don’t want to think Jack is right.
“I’m not afraid. Uh-uh. Oh, no. Don’t turn this around on me, Jack. I told you why I haven’t married, and it has everything to do with not finding the right guy. That’s not scared; it’s smart. As for Anne, Bill is the right guy. He loves her.”
“I love you,” Jack says mildly, just part of the argument.
“And I love you, but that is for another discussion.” Determined, I change the subject. “The immediate issue is Margo’s family. They’re staying through the week. She’s looking for vacancies in Watch Hill. Any suggestions?” He wouldn’t know about vacancies, but he would know about the best places to stay. Margo wouldn’t step foot inside a place like The Swan. The thought makes me smile.
“What’s wrong with the house?” he asks.
“Nothing, but you saw the size of the boys. Both of them are approaching six feet, and the guest room bed is a very old double. All those legs?” I give a doubting sputter.
“That’s a nice problem to have,” Jack says with something akin to envy. He might have liked a brother, might have liked a big family having to crowd into a house. “A first-world problem. Can’t they squeeze in for a few nights?”
“Not Margo’s boys.”
“So use my house.”
“For Margo’s boys?” I ask in surprise. Jack doesn’t know them, barely knows Margo after all this time. He doesn’t owe her any favors.
But, of course, he would be doing the favor for me. What he says next, though, turns that around.
“For you and Joy,” he says, like it’s a no-brainer, like I should have been thinking this myself. “You and Joy stay with me. Then Margo and her family can be with Anne.” When I stare at him in alarm, he shrugs. “I have room.”
“You have dreams.”
“Those, too, but think about it, Mal. Joy would love it. She kept Guy with her the whole time she was at the clinic. He’s dying to sleep with her.”
“He told you that?”
“Very clearly.”
“I’mnot sleeping with Guy.”
The look he gives me now says that I’m daft. “Why would you? Guy sleeps with Joy, you sleep with me.”
“Uh-huh. With Joy in the next room?”
“Down the hall.”
“Like we were quiet just now?”
“That’s just it,” he says with a crooked grin and a whisper of conspiratorial excitement. “Think of the fun we’d have trying not to scream. Is that a turn-on, or what?” He is incorrigible.
I clear my throat. “I’m not ready for her to see that.”
“See what?” he asks, all innocence as he turns at the tri-road onto the one for Bay Bluff. “She doesn’t have towatchus.”
“You know what I mean, Jack. She’s only thirteen.”
“Which is old enough to know what happens between a man and a woman.”
“It’s a different thing when the woman is your mother and she is in bed with a man in the next room.”
“Down the hall.”
“Seriously, Jack.”
