Page 14 of The Marriage Blunder

He sipped. “It’ll be quick. She won’t linger.”

I sat across from him, arranging the robe to cover just enough to be polite. He noticed, of course, and pointedly did not comment.

He said, “She’s going to say I seduced you.”

Oh, he did.

“Did you?”

He smiled. It was the first real smile of the morning, and I felt it somewhere behind my sternum. “I’m going to need more coffee for that conversation.”

We drank in silence. I was content to let the silence hold, but Jude shifted in his seat, restless.

“You want to talk about what happens next?” he asked.

I looked out the window. The Strip was already awake, or maybe it had never gone to sleep. I said, “I’m going to end it with Carolyn.”

He nodded.

“You should decide what you want, but I’m not going to undo this unless you make me.”

He considered that. He considered it for a long time and then finally said, “Okay.”

It was the right answer.

I stood and went to shower. I left the door half-open, which was less an invitation than a test. Jude did not follow. He was not the kind of man who tested doors.

When I returned, towel slung at the waist, he was on the phone, voice pitched low. I recognized the grim humor, the smile that was for the person on the other end of the line and knew he was talking to his mother.

I dried off, dressed, and checked my own phone. Two missed calls from my mother, one from my father. The time difference had not made them more patient.

I called my mother first.

She answered on the first ring. “Kenneth,” she said. Not a question.

I said, “I’m in Las Vegas.”

“I know. I read the flight itinerary you sent.” She did not ask why. She knew. She asked, “Is it over with Carolyn?”

I said, “Yes.”

She said, “Is it because of that boy?”

I considered correcting her—Jude was not a boy, not even close—but I let it go, a little confused as to how she even knew there was a “boy”. I answered her honestly. “Yes.”

A pause, a slight exhale, not disappointment, but something like the memory of it. “Are you going to marry him?”

“It’s already done.”

She made a sound that, under different circumstances, could have been a laugh. “Your father will want to review the legal implications.”

I said, “I expected as much.”

“And, Kenneth?”

“Yes?”

“I like him better already.”