The Secret Ingredient for a Happy Marriage

by Shirley Jump

  No matter how much she tried, she couldn’t turn Will into Ben. Couldn’t transform that amazing kiss from almost-Ben into actually-Ben.

  “I had a wonderful time,” Will said.

  “Me too. Thank you for lunch.”

  “My pleasure. And I mean that.” He gave her hands a squeeze and leaned closer, close enough for her to catch the woodsy notes of his cologne, close enough to kiss him again. In that second, she imagined a future with him. Making love in his bedroom, waking up in his arms, strolling along the street in the early morning. The temptation inside her strengthened, urging her to close that gap, to feel his mouth on hers one more time. “When will I see you again, Nora the Neighbor?”

  She held on to him for a second longer and then released his hands and stepped back. She wasn’t this person, and wasn’t going to be. For better or worse, she was Nora O’Bannon Daniels, a little OCD, a little uptight, and a woman who, in the end, couldn’t do the wrong thing. A woman who, despite everything, still loved the man who had put that ring on her finger. A woman who couldn’t fully picture herself with Will, because he didn’t fit right with Sarah and Jake and the life she already had. She wasn’t ready for whatever could happen in Truro, and she might never be. “You won’t.”

  He cocked his head. “Why not? I thought you had a great time.”

  “I did. But that isn’t enough, Will. It’s not enough to break the rules I live by. I thought I could, and to be honest, that’s most of the reason why I drove down here today. I wanted to know what it could be like if…” She let out a long breath. “If I did something the old Nora would never do. I guess I thought if I lived my life differently, even if only for an afternoon, I’d get different results. But all this would do is make my mess even bigger.”

  He considered her words and finally nodded. “I can respect that. Doesn’t mean I like it, but I can respect it.” He reached up and cupped her jaw. “I hope he knows how lucky he is.”

  The days when Ben thought he was lucky to have her in his life had passed. “It doesn’t matter if he does,” she said. “I know who I am, and even if the person I am is far from perfect, it’s a person I want to respect in the morning.”

  Because she hadn’t been that person, she realized. She had been driving down the wrong path for a while. Now she needed to try to navigate that road alone, not with a man she plugged into Ben’s place.

  Will dropped his hand. “Well, if you ever want to do something you might regret in the morning, you have my number.” He pressed a quick kiss to her forehead before he turned on his heel and disappeared into the dark.

  TWENTY-THREE

  God invented books for days like this, Magpie told herself as she settled into her couch and flipped through the stack of paperbacks on her end table. She couldn’t remember the last time she had read anything longer than a magazine article. She loved books—always had—and frequently shipped new titles to herself from Amazon. Books that stacked up in that pile but never got read. Magpie was always too busy running from one place to another to be bogged down with a stack of paperbacks and a story line.

  She’d begged off on family dinner tonight, telling her mother and sisters that she had a deadline to meet. But her laptop sat on the end table, the lid shut. She needed to get back to work, to answer emails, file this week’s story. But she didn’t do any of that. She sat on her couch, turning pages in the latest Harlan Coben novel. She lost the plot five minutes into starting the first chapter.

  The apartment was quiet, the city winding down outside her windows. The dog had gone to live with Nora and the kids, and Magpie had to admit she kinda missed the furry moron. For her twenty-six years of life, Magpie had mostly been a loner, living out of a backpack as she traveled from assignment to assignment, never staying long enough in any one place to connect.

  Except with Charlie. He’d been different somehow, more fun, less serious and less competitive than the other journalists she hung around with. Charlie lived by the seat of his pants, greeting every day as if it was a new adventure. He never took anything too seriously—which was something she appreciated.

  Until something serious happened.

  Her doorbell rang. She debated ignoring it and then heard Charlie through the door. What was he, Beetlejuice? Did the mere thought of his name deliver him to her doorstep?

  “Maggie, you’re starting to make me wonder if I need to buy new cologne or mouthwash,” he called through the oak separating them. “Or maybe you think I have cooties? I assure you, I got my malaria shots.”

  She laughed. Damn that man for making her laugh and dissolving her resolve. Magpie swung off the couch and padded over to the door. When she opened it, there was Charlie, with a bouquet of flowers in one hand and a bottle of bourbon in the other.

  “Let’s make some bad decisions together tonight,” he said, hoisting the Maker’s Mark. His smile was tempting. Very, very tempting.

  She shook her head. “I’ve made enough bad decisions with you.”

  He leaned in, his brown eyes sparkling, his smile warm. “And some pretty damned good memories. So let me in and let’s have some fun.”

  “I’m not in the mood for that, sorry. Thanks for coming by.” She started to shut the door, but he put his hand up and stopped her.

  “What’s up? Seriously. You went from sixty to zero with me. You disappear from the hotel without a word, barely talk to me in the last month and a half. Did I piss you off somehow and not know?”

  He wasn’t going to give up. The dogged determination that was at the core of his career success would mean he’d be on her doorstep again in a few days. When Charlie wanted something, he went after it. And right now, he wanted her. Magpie sighed and opened the door again. “Come on in. We need to talk anyway.”

  “Talk?” He gave her that charming, joking wink. “Since when have we done much of that?”

  Magpie flicked on a light, muted the TV, and then sat on the sofa. Charlie laid the flowers on the end table before he headed into the kitchen. “Do you want yours on the rocks or neat?” he called over his shoulder.

  “None for me, thanks.”

  Charlie stopped and turned back. “No bourbon? Did I just hear that from the woman who drank me under the table in Venezuela? And Turkey, if I remember right.”

  “I’ve got a drink, thanks.”

  He shrugged, grabbed a tumbler from the cabinet, and filled it halfway with bourbon before returning to the sofa. He sat down beside her, and Magpie shifted to put her back to the arm of the sofa and cross her legs on the cushion.

  The humor dropped from Charlie’s face. “I get the feeling this isn’t a talk I want to have. Is this because I said all that I love you bullshit? Because we can just erase that, if you want, go back to the way it was.” He made a hand motion as if wiping away the words. “I know that kind of thing freaks you out. I don’t know what got into me. Maybe some kind of love bug when I was in Italy.” His chuckle died into a sigh when she didn’t join in on the joke.

  Magpie wished she had talked to Nora first. There’d never seemed to be a good time when she was at the beach house. No, that was a lie. There’d been hundreds of opportunities. She’d chosen not to use any of them because talking to Nora would mean facing reality, and as long as she could, Magpie wanted to pretend none of this was happening.

  But here was Charlie, in the flesh again and as eager as a new puppy, completely unaware of what had happened in Magpie’s life. He deserved to know, regardless of what her decision would be. And maybe once she told him, he’d leave and she could go back to existing on her own. With no one to answer to, no one to worry about…

  And no one to tell her what to do with her own fucked-up life.

  She waited while he took a sip of the bourbon. “Okay, so, you know me. I’m not a small-talk, beat-around-the-bush kind of girl.” She took in a deep breath, let it out. “Remember that night in Caracas? The party at that bar and all those shots we did?”

  “In a foggy blur, but yeah.”
>
  She’d landed a major interview with Laverne Cox that day, a cover story that would showcase the Orange Is the New Black actress and her passionate fight for transgender people. The kind of story that would take Magpie’s career up a few notches. She and Charlie had laughed and danced and toasted her success, while the band played and the liquor poured. It was hot, the bar one of those hideaway ones only the locals knew about, lacking in atmosphere and air-conditioning but filled with the real flavor of the city. One drink had turned into two, had turned into ten…

  She’d lost count of how much she’d had to drink when she’d stumbled back to the hotel with Charlie. They’d ended up in her room, in a crazy rush to tear off clothes and finish what they’d started when they’d been grinding against each other on the dance floor. They hadn’t thought—they’d just screwed.

  “When we got together that night, we were both pretty drunk, and we didn’t really think—”

  “All I could think about was touching you.” Charlie grinned. “You were wearing that short red dress, and my God, you were the most beautiful woman in the room.”

  “And when we went to bed,” she went on, the words tumbling out of her, overlapping with Charlie’s because if she stopped talking, she’d never say it, “we didn’t use protection. And now I’m”—she blew out a breath and, with it, the last couple words she’d kept close to her heart all this time—“I’m pregnant.”

  Millimeter by millimeter, his grin faded. The light dimmed in his eyes. All the laughter and fun that wrapped around Charlie like a leather jacket ebbed away. “Pregnant?”

  She nodded.

  “And what are you doing about it?”

  “I haven’t decided yet.” That was the truth. Ever since she’d seen the two pink lines on that stick a month after she left Venezuela, she’d been debating. The list of pros and cons was as long as an airport runway, but she’d yet to sway into one column or the other.

  “Well, good. Then you can just get rid of it, and we can get back to business.” He got to his feet. “I’ll get you a glass. A little bourbon won’t hurt now.”

  White-hot anger rushed through Magpie at the harshness of his words, the matter-of-fact, decision-is-done tone. “I told you, I don’t want a drink. And I don’t want to get back to business. Nor do I know if I want to get rid of ‘it,’ Charlie.”

  He came around to face her. “Honey, you and I live our lives out of carry-ons. We’re rarely in the same place for more than a few days. You can’t bring a kid into that. And besides, you always told me you were not the domesticated kind. That’s part of what I loved about you. You were never going to ask me for a white picket fence and a Labrador.”

  “I never thought I wanted those things. I’m not sure I do now.” Her hand rested on her abdomen. She’d gained only a couple of pounds, the difference not even noticeable. It seemed impossible to believe there was a human being forming in there. She could almost convince herself it wasn’t happening; it wasn’t real.

  Almost.

  “You know I care about you,” Charlie said. “I think you’re awesome. But I’m not the kind of guy who does kids and a mortgage. Hell, I can barely take care of myself, never mind one or two other people.”

  “I’m not expecting anything out of you.” But that was a lie. A part of Magpie had hoped for some Hollywood ending. Maybe she’d read too many novels or gotten caught up in her envy over Nora’s nearly perfect life. Maybe that silly dog and the week with her niece and nephew had given her some kind of nesting-instinct thing. Or maybe it was seeing the way Nora had dropped to her knees and hugged Sarah to her chest after they’d brought the girl home. The relief and love and protectiveness that Nora had for her daughter—the same kind of support and protection her older sister had wrapped around Magpie in all those scary years after Dad died. That was where the reality was, not in the pages of the novels on her table.

  “Uh, I don’t want to be responsible,” Charlie said. “I know that’s a shitty thing to say, but, Maggie, you know me. If I have more than twenty dollars in my pocket, I figure I’m not living right.”

  A part of her had known all along that this was what Charlie would say. The same devil-may-care attitude that had attracted her to him made him a lousy partner outside of the bedroom. He was the opposite of dependable and thrifty and had no life plans beyond the next assignment.

  She got to her feet, ignoring the flowers on the end table. They were roses anyway, the only flowers she despised for being such common clichés. They’d wilt in a matter of hours, be dead in a couple days. She’d told Charlie that more than once and realized it said something about the man if he didn’t pay attention to her words. “I think you should go, Charlie.”

  “Hey, hey, I didn’t mean to piss you off.” He put a hand on her arm, and for the first time since she met him, his touch annoyed her. “Let’s go have some fun and talk about this later. Besides, what better way is there to spend your Sunday night than with me?”

  She pressed the bourbon bottle into his hands and then crossed to the door to open it. “I’ve got plans, Charlie. And they don’t include you.” She waved him out the door, then shut it against his protests. “Not anymore.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Most Sundays, Nora enjoyed family dinner. Not just because it was a meal she didn’t have to cook after a long week in the bakery but also because being around her sisters, with all their quirks and squabbles, reminded her of those years living at home, when there was nothing bigger to worry about than who was going to ask her to prom.

  This Sunday wasn’t one of those days.

  Nora had driven back from Truro, stopped off to feed the dog and let him out, and then gone straight to her mother’s house. Ben had texted to say he’d meet her there to drop off Jake and Sarah, which left Nora without something to keep her busy so she could avoid talking to her mother and avoid thinking about what had almost happened this afternoon.

  The second Nora shed her coat, her mother pounced. “Nora, you look so pale. Didn’t you get a lot of sun when you were on vacation?”

  “I wore sunscreen, and that was last week. Besides, if I came back with a tan, you’d give me a lecture about skin cancer.”

  “Well, you do need to watch those moles. You never know when one might turn deadly.” Her mother opened the oven, checked on the pot roast inside, and then straightened to stir the gravy. “Dinner is almost ready. I do hope my grandchildren get here soon.”

  Nora took the pan of mashed potatoes and loaded them into a serving bowl. “How is Iris doing?”

  Ma tasted the gravy, made a face, and added a pinch of salt. “What do you think of her?”

  “She picks up really fast. I think she’s going to work out well.” Iris was bright and eager, and only seemed to get more so the longer she spent in the bakery. The girl had come in early and worked late, never complaining about the long hours on her feet or the sometimes frantic pace.

  Ma tipped the gravy and poured it into the white porcelain gravy boat that had sat on Gramma’s dining room table for decades. Every time Nora saw it, it was like having her grandmother at the table again.

  “Do you think she’s…trustworthy?” Ma asked.

  “Yeah, I guess so. I mean, I haven’t worked with her as much as you and Bridget have, but she seems to be responsible.”

  “I didn’t ask about whether she was responsible.” Ma washed her hands and grabbed a dishtowel. She put her back to the stove as she dried her hands, silent for a moment. “Two hundred dollars was missing from the register several days ago. I ran the totals several times, then had Bridget double-check to see if we entered a credit card receipt wrong or something. Everything was correct—except for the amount of cash.”

  “You think Iris stole it?” The young intern had seemed so grateful for the job, so eager to learn and please everyone. It seemed completely out of character, but then again, Nora had seen the man she’d married act as far out of character as one could. No one who knew Ben would think he would g
amble away his family’s home and future, but he had.

  “I don’t know if she did it or not,” Ma said. “I was about to offer her a permanent job before I discovered this, but now I’m not sure. What do you think?”

  Nora stopped, halfway to transporting the potatoes to the table. “Are you asking my advice, Ma? About something to do with the bakery?” Nora could literally count on one hand the times her mother had come to her for counsel, and never about anything more serious than whether they should switch from big gift cards to small gift tags.

  Her mother picked up the gravy boat and followed her daughter into the dining room. Ma was a small woman with the same fiery red hair from her youth, dyed now instead of natural, and she had a fiery personality to match. Nora expected a lecture or a criticism and braced herself.

  “I won’t be around forever,” Ma said, “and I think it’s high time I handed over the decision making to you. You have good business instincts and you’ve done a wonderful job with the bakery, Nora. I think it’s time you…well, you were in charge.”

  Nora placed the back of her hand on her mother’s forehead. “Do you have a fever? Are you drinking? Because I just heard you say you were going to give control to me.”

  Ma swatted away Nora’s hand. “I’m doing no such thing. I’m tired and I want to retire and”—she pivoted back to the gravy—“I might want to go to Florida for a bit this winter.”

  “To Florida?” Her mother had never traveled farther than Martha’s Vineyard. Her life had been tied to the bakery, her kids, and the small world she knew in Dorchester, and vacations were day trips, if she took one at all. “Alone?”

  “I might go with”—Ma turned away, burying her face in the fridge to retrieve the butter—“Roger.”

  “Did I hear you say Roger?” Nora gaped. “You are going on a trip with a man?”