Page 19
He blinked and shook himself.
“We’d better get going.”
Closing her door, he went around to the driver’s side to start the ignition, then stepped around the front of the car to crank it up, and soon they were on their way.
They made their way to the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge through quiet, narrow residential streets, maintaining a companionable silence that she was hesitant to break. Even though a thousand questions plagued her about his outing with Doug.
But he seemed to have woken up on the wrong side of the bed, and she didn’t want to press. What had put him in such a mood? Usually, he wasn’t this taciturn. Was it something at work? Or was he upset with her for some reason? Though she couldn’t imagine why.
As they began their ascent past the webbed cables of the bridge, looking out at the dull gray of the East River in the morning light, she couldn’t contain her questions anymore.
“Jack?” she asked slowly, trying to figure out how she was going to ease into this.
“Yes?”
She pursed her lips and then decided to just come out with it.
“What happened? You seem out of sorts.”
He drove on in silence, staring straight ahead. Did he even hear her above the roar of the Model T’s engine?
As she was about to ask again, he cleared his throat. “I had a nice time golfing with Doug. Our ruse is working. He thinks I have designs on you, and I have good reason to believe that proposal you were hoping for is just around the corner.”
His tone of voice didn’t match his words at all. Why wasn’t he happy? This was working exactly as planned.
“That’s wonderful news. Thank you for all your help. I can hardly wait for my next date with him.”
Jack’s hands tightened on the steering wheel, and he changed lanes abruptly to pass a slow truck only to find himself behind an even slower truck. He grumbled something beneath his breath—probably a curse he didn’t want her to hear. As if he hadn’t taught her every curse word she knew.
“So why are you so grumpy?”
“I’m not grumpy.” He honked at the truck in front of him and whispered more invective.
“You are definitely grumpy.”
There was a long silence as Jack changed lanes again, now several cars behind the truck he originally tried to pass.
“Doug wants to buy my house,” he said at last.
Ah. So that was what got his back up.
“I take it you don’t want to sell?”
He didn’t answer.
“It’s probably for the best. I can’t quite imagine living there with him.”
“Why?”
Because it was Jack’s, and she couldn’t imagine it belonging to anyone else. Because the childhood memories she had of the place were precious to her. Because it was the place where she fell in love for the first time. But she couldn’t say any of that. “It’s too close to my parents.”
“Oh.”
Jack swerved around another truck, honking.
“Besides, don’t you want to get married and raise a family there?” When he’d been dating Myrtle, Constance assumed she’d have to get used to him becoming a family man right next door. It was embarrassing how badly she’d reacted when they got engaged. It sank her into depression for months. Her family sent her to doctor after doctor, and none of them ever suspected the true cause of her distress. It wasn’t aftereffects of the Spanish Flu, though she was grateful that was what everyone believed.
She tried so hard not to resent Myrtle as she recovered, and just when she’d managed to resign herself to their marriage, that awful woman went and broke Jack’s heart. It still made her see red to think of how Myrtle treated him.
