He laughs, but there's no humor in it. "My prick of a father got fuckingmarried."
I wait a few seconds for him to say something else. Because surely I didn't hear him correctly. "What did you just say?"
"Married. My father. Got married." He says each word like he's biting it off. "And nobody thought to mention it to me until hissecretarysent me an invite this afternoon for an 'introductory family dinner' on Friday night."
My eyebrows shoot up. "Wait. Is this for real? When did he get married?"
"According to the email, last weekend." Asher opens the fridge, pulls out a beer, then slams the door shut again. The bottles inside rattle. "Our anniversary weekend, actually. While we were in Carmel, he was getting married to some woman I've never even heard of."
He doesn't even pause. "How fucked is it that I didn’t even notice he was gone? Like, yeah, we work on different floors and I do everything I can to steer clear of him. And yeah, we barely cross paths on a normal week. But seriously. What the fuck??? I just thought I was having a run of good luck not having to see him.”
The father son dynamic between Asher and Dean is abysmal. Despite working for the same company, they barely communicate. They exist in separate worlds. Dean could disappear for weeks on end and Asher wouldn't know why. That's how distant they are. It breaks my heart for my husband because he deserves better.
"Who is she?"
"Her name is Caroline." He twists the cap off the beer and takes a long drink. "Caroline. Seriously, babe, I don't know a Caroline. I've never met a Caroline in my father’s orbit. And now she's mystepmother."
The insanity of it is staggering. Dean Stevens, who just last year spent months orchestrating every detail of our wedding, who invited three hundred people and hired a twelve-pieceorchestra and insisted tens of thousands of white roses be flown in from Ecuador, got married without huge fanfare. "And you learned all this from an email?" I ask.
"Yep." Asher sets the beer down hard enough that he's lucky it didn't break. The subject line said 'Family Dinner This Friday.' And then there was just this casual little note like, 'Mr. Stevens would like to introduce you to his wife Caroline and her daughter Devon. Dinner at seven. Business casual attire requested.' First of all, Mr. Stevens. I hate when she does that. He's my father. Just call him that."
I nod my agreement. It is weird. Then, I realize all of what he said. "Wait. The new wife has a daughter?"
"Yeah. Apparently Caroline has a kid. Seventeen years old. Devon." He paces to the window, then back to the island. "So not only did my father get married without telling me, but I'm also getting a teenage stepsister. Yay, I guess."
I try to process this. Dean, who controlled every aspect of our wedding. Dean, who made me feel like my choices weren't good enough. Dean, who turned our intimate ceremony into a spectacle. "That's..." I don't even know what to say. "That's insane."
"Itis," Asher agrees. He runs both hands through his hair. "Do you know how many times he called me during our engagement? How many times he emailed me to 'discuss wedding details'? He had opinions about the fucking napkins, Julie. The napkins. And now he just goes and gets married without even telling me?"
"Maybe it was spontaneous," I offer, though I can’t conceive of that being possible. Dean Stevens is always thinking ten steps ahead.
"Nothing my father does is spontaneous." Asher picks up his beer again, then sets it back down without drinking. "Maybe he met her, she saw dollar signs, seduced him, gave world-classhead, threw in some anal, and he wanted to lock that feeling down. So he married her before anyone could talk him out of it."
"Asher! That’s crude and you don't know that."
"You’re right, it is crude, but what the fuck? I don't know a fucking thing. That's the problem." He leans against the counter, his shoulders tight. "I don't know who she is. I don't know where they met. I don't know how long they've been together. I don't know anything about this kid she has. And apparently I'm just supposed to show up on Friday night and smile and pretend like this is all totally normal."
I walk over to him and put my hand on his arm. His muscles are tense under my palm. "Maybe it'll be fine," I say. "Maybe she's nice."
"Maybe." But he doesn't sound convinced. He looks at me, and some of the anger drains from his face. "I'm sorry. I know I'm being intense. It's just... the hypocrisy of it. You know? He made our wedding into this huge production. He invited people we'd never met. He changed the venue, the menu, the guest list. It was a spectacle we both hated, but he forced it and I didn't know how to stop the fucking train. I've carried that guilt for a goddamn year. You display exactly two wedding photos in this house and I know it's because it wasn't what you wanted."
"And now he just quietly gets married like it's nothing." Asher shakes his head. "I don't get it. I don't get any of it."
I don't either. But standing here in our kitchen, watching my husband process his anger, I feel something shift. Our first year of marriage has been good. We've been happy in this house, building our life together, keeping Dean at a comfortable distance with those bi-monthly dinners. We've had space to be ourselves.
But now there's a wife. And a stepdaughter. And a mandatory family dinner on Friday night. "We'll go to dinner," I say. "We'll meet them. And then we'll figure it out from there."
Asher pulls me into a hug and holds me tight. "Yeah," he says into my hair. "Yeah, okay."
But I can feel the tension still coiled in his body. His breathing hasn't slowed. His hands grip my back like he's holding on to something that might slip away. There's something else. I pull back to look at him. "What is it?"
He shakes his head. "He said he'd never marry again. After my mom died, he told me marriage was a prison. That he'd done his duty and he was done. What the fuck happened? What caused this?”
"People change their minds."
"Not him." Asher's jaw tightens. "He doesn't change his mind. He makes decisions and he sticks to them, damn what everyone else thinks. So why now? Why her?"
I don't have an answer.
