“Right.” Shifting back to business. “Well, this has been a great use of time. Now we know in no uncertain terms what wecan’tafford. So we’re basically looking for something between this and a rotten shack in the woods.”
He appreciated the gesture of Wren cheering him up. She knew it would be hard for him to look at the homes that werejust out of their reach, or worse, to get his heart set on one of them. So she brought him here: the former home of Pitbull, probably. He turned to leave, but she grabbed his arm.
“Where are you off to?” she said, looking up from her phone. “Sorry, I got a text from Charlie.”
“Everything OK?”
She read it aloud: “I could really use your help at the cake tasting next week. Need your legendary sweet tooth. What do you say?” Then: “And then there’s a GIF of that guy fromCake Islandyelling ‘I love cake!’ and falling over backward in his chair. See?” She showed Arthur.
“Why do you look…perturbed?” Arthur asked. He knew how much it had been weighing on Wren, the strain between her and Charlie. It was written all over her face.
“Eh, we had a weird thing the other night. This is the olive branch.”
“A fight?”
“Just girl stuff. Nothing a pillow fight in our underwear couldn’t solve.”
“Wren…”
“I’m kidding! Jeez,” Wren said. “Since when did comedy become illegal?” She deepened her voice here, doing her best sarcastic impression of a conservative pundit.
“Are you gonna go?”
“Please, you think I’d even consider missing free cake? In my condition?” She tapped out an emphatic reply, then put her phone away. Arthur wasn’t convinced the issue was dead and buried, and he hated that he couldn’t fix it for her—he, the master of keeping the peace, an expert at placating all parties involved. But he couldn’t help, and even if he could, she would be too stubborn to let him.
“You ready to go, then?” Arthur asked.
“Go where?”
“The next stop,” he said. She stared, blank-faced. “Reality,” he clarified.
“But we haven’t even had the tour yet.”
“You arranged a tour?”
Wren hung her head sheepishly. “All I did was fill out the little form saying I might be interested, and then all of a sudden my phone was ringing.”
“Oh no, what did you do?”
“I don’t know!” Wren was suddenly flustered. “The lady was just so nice, she insisted on dropping everything to show us around.”
Arthur went beet red. What had she gotten them into?
“Sheprobably thinks we can actually afford this place. That we’re mega-loaded. Did you correct her?”
“I was going to get around to it.”
“Wren…”
The sweet hum of an electric golf cart floated into their ears, and a shiny black one rolled to a stop near the fountain. Out stepped a pantsuited woman, the Realtor, clutching the necks of two sweating bottles of sparkling water between her fingers.
“I’m sorry I’m late! Had a showing all the way on the other side of the community.” The gated community, situated on the outskirts of a shared golf course, Arthur reminded himself. “Anyone thirsty?”
This was the part where Wren would come clean and they would apologize for the misunderstanding slash colossal waste of this professional’s time, and they would run off with their tails between their legs. Instead, the mother of his child said,“Absolutely,” grabbed one of the Perriers, and brought it to her lips with a near sexual lip smack. “God, that’s good.”
“Mr. Peterson,” the agent said, extending a hand to shake his.
“Doctor,” Wren incorrectly corrected. “He likes people to call him doctor.”
