The Secret Ingredient for a Happy Marriage

by Shirley Jump

  “It’s not going to happen. I forgot to take the sign down, but I’ll do that tonight. I have to tell you, I was sweating it. I didn’t know if I could pull this off in time, but everything came together at the last minute and”—he put out his arms—“the house is ours again.”

  Take the sign down. Pull this off. Everything came together. The house is ours again. She tried to put the pieces in order, but his words and the facts she knew jumbled in her mind. “But…the bank refused to work with us. I called. I even had a lawyer call the bank, and they wouldn’t talk to him, either.”

  “I found another bank, Nora. And I got another mortgage.” Ben kept on talking, and Nora stared at him, hearing the words but not understanding how they could be true. “I had to put down some money, but with the added equity from finishing the kitchen and bathroom, I had just enough.”

  “Money? What money?” She gasped and put a hand over her mouth. “Oh God, please don’t tell me you gambled with the kids’ college fund.” It was the only sizeable pile of cash they had left. The one thing she had refused to touch.

  “I didn’t gamble with or on anything,” Ben said. “Except the chance that you could fall in love with me again and we could keep our family together.”

  She wanted to step into this fantasy with him and believe it would all be different going forward. But Nora had history with Ben. A history that said he was just making another grand gesture, and in a week or a month, she’d find out that it was all based on a wing and a prayer, and her life would tumble down another rabbit hole. And they both still wanted different things—Ben with the big family, Nora with the urge to figure out who she was when she wasn’t a wife and a mother. “It’s too late, Ben. I’m sorry. I can’t do this again. I just…can’t.”

  She started to turn away, and he stopped her. His hand on her arm was warm and tender, and a part of her wanted to lean into that touch.

  “I have never known you to quit anything, Nora O’Bannon.” He paused a beat. Downstairs, the radio shifted into Bryan Adams’s “(Everything I Do) I Do It for You,” another song she loved. “Why are you quitting us?”

  “I’m not. You did.” Now the tears did come, rushing forward like a waterfall held back too long. She let them fall, no longer caring if he saw that she was upset. She was tired of arguing, tired of fighting, tired of feeling like this entire thing was an uphill battle. She didn’t want to fall for the balcony and the bathroom and the cake and the damned mix tape. She wanted to guard her heart, keep it from breaking again, so she threw up the familiar walls. “You quit us when you gambled. And you quit us when you started spending every Friday and Saturday night with someone else.”

  “That’s where you think I’ve been every weekend? With someone else? Nora—”

  “Ben, stop. Just stop.” She put up her hands and started to back away. She couldn’t look in his eyes and listen to his voice and believe him. Not again. “This is all going to go away next month or next year. I can’t fall into that trap a second time. We don’t even want the same future.” She pivoted away from him.

  Except maybe a part of her did. She had sat in that diner this afternoon, seeing Magpie’s glow of anticipation and joy, heard her excitement about starting a family, and realized how much she wanted her family back. All four of them, together again. Sledding down the town hill in the winter, picking the ugliest pumpkin from the pumpkin patch, dashing in and out of the cold Atlantic Ocean. All the things they used to do and then stopped.

  “I pulled away from you, from everyone,” Nora said. “I shut you out.”

  “I know you did. You were hurt, and when you’re hurt, Nora, you withdraw like a turtle into her shell.” He brushed a lock of hair off her forehead and smiled down at her. “I should have tried harder.”

  “We both should have.” She shook her head and backed up. “Maybe it’s too late, Ben.”

  “Don’t you want to know why I quit gambling?”

  She was halfway across the bedroom, ready to leave, when Ben spoke. She paused, closed her eyes, and let out a long breath before turning back toward her husband. “Does it matter? Because the reason you started is still there. Your family was boring, and whatever you found in that casino was better than us. I have news for you, Ben. Raising a family sometimes is boring as hell. There’s dishes and homework and soccer games. Times I wanted to scream if I had to do one more load of laundry. You escaped all that, and you went into those casinos, and you left me here alone.”

  “I know.” His eyes were sad, his shoulders low. “And I’m sorry. I’m truly sorry.”

  “And so I filled in those gaps with work and lists and organizing,” she went on, the words a waterfall tumbling out of her mouth. Admissions she had kept tucked in her heart for months. Years. “I kept telling myself I had it all under control, and it was all going to be fine. I didn’t tell anyone about what we were going through and I didn’t ask for help because…because I was ashamed.”

  He tried to reach for her, but she stepped out of range. “Nora, I never meant to make you feel that way.”

  “You didn’t do it. I did. I failed, Ben. I failed…” And now her voice broke, and the truth that she had hidden from her husband, her children, her family, and herself came rushing forward to fill that space. It wasn’t all Ben’s fault, and it wasn’t all because he’d bet on a hand of cards. “I failed all of you. I thought I was doing all the things a mom and a wife is supposed to do. The dishes and the laundry and the job. I kept this tight grip on schedules and sorting the frigging socks, instead of letting any of you know that it was too much and I was drowning every single, solitary day.”

  He took her hands and pulled her to him. “I knew you were, and I deserted you. I kept thinking if I could make more money, I could solve all our problems. Hire a maid or let you cut back at the bakery. Now I realize that we didn’t need the money, Nora. Or the schedules. Or the lists. Or more kids or a bigger house.” He rubbed his thumb over her lip, a tender gesture he’d done a thousand times before. “We needed each other.”

  She wanted to believe that he meant those words. That going forward would be about the two of them, raising their family, having room between them for their own selves. The future she had once dared to imagine, before that winter day when she lost everything.

  “Where did the money come from, Ben?” she said. “The down payment for the new mortgage. The countertops and cabinets and tile.” Please don’t say you won it in a casino.

  “Every Friday and Saturday night for the past year, I’ve been working for Jim Harcourt on a house he wanted to sell. He was building it on his own, without the company backing. He and his brothers had a falling out, and Jim wanted to test the waters but also keep it on the down low. He didn’t have much to finance the project, so I agreed to help, in exchange for a cut of the profits. Jim’s always been good to me and brought me in on plenty of projects, so when he said he needed help, I was there. I didn’t tell you because…”

  “We had stopped talking.” The day Nora moved into the guest bedroom had pretty much been the last time she and Ben had a conversation with any kind of substance. After that, they became two passing ships, exchanging the bare minimum of words. She’d never asked about those weekend nights, and he’d never volunteered the information.

  “And I didn’t want to let you down again. If the house didn’t sell, I would have wasted all those hours for nothing. I would have screwed up yet again, and I couldn’t bear to do that. I had already hurt this family so much. Too much.”

  “We both did,” she said softly. “I hurt us as much as you did.”

  “You, Nora, were amazing. You did nothing wrong. You held us together when I was lost. All I wanted to do was make that up to you, to show you that I didn’t want to lose you or our family or this house.” He smiled at her, a wide, happy smile like the one he used to wear all the time. “So I kept on working with Jim, pouring hours and hours into that project. The house he and I built did sell, and my share was enough to pay
for the supplies here and the down payment on the new mortgage. As for the bank, Jim called in a few favors and found a sympathetic loan officer willing to take a risk on us.”

  She stared at her husband as if he were a stranger. Ben, the one who had never been serious, the one who had ignored the bills, had kept his head down all this time, trying to save something that she had already given up on. “You really pulled this off?”

  He nodded. “I’m sorry I didn’t step in when I should have. I’m sorry I left you to deal with all this for far too long. I’m sorry I left that day and didn’t know what you were going through. I should have been here, Nora. For all of it.” He drew in a breath and paused a moment, dropping his gaze to the lazy circle his thumbs drew on the back of their joined hands. “After I went to rehab, I felt like such a failure. What kind of father gambles away his paycheck? The guilt crushed me. Paralyzed me. And so I let you shoulder a burden that should have been shared.”

  Failure. It was a feeling Nora knew well. The two of them, hiding the truth from each other, from themselves, so afraid that it would all fall apart if they were honest. In the end, it had anyway, and now, in this first real and true conversation she’d had with her husband in years, she could feel the beginnings of healing. The knitting of a new connection, one built out of the common experience of being battered and bruised by life and bad decisions.

  “You mentioned that the reason you wanted to keep our family together was because you wanted somewhere to belong. That that was what you were looking for when you married me.” She sighed. “I was looking for the same thing, Ben, when I married you.”

  “But you have a huge family, Nora.”

  “One I never felt I really belonged in. Because I was lying to them every single damned day of my life. I was the one who had it all together. Had the perfect life with the husband and the kids, and now even a dog. But then, one day, I told them all the truth, and I thought they would look at me differently the next day or tell me where I’d screwed up. But no one did. My sisters and my mother loved me and hugged me and kept on telling me stupid jokes. What kept me from belonging was all that work I did to keep up this image that was so far from the true picture, I couldn’t seem to find my way home again.” She looked at the key in her hand. It was heavy, solid. “I want to go home, Ben.”

  His face fell and he stepped back. “Okay. If you want to go over that list, I guess we can.”

  Home. It wasn’t a place; it wasn’t a set of countertops or a balcony off the bedroom. It was something she had already had and didn’t see, like she was Dorothy in a black-and-white world. She looked at the man she had loved for most of her life, the man she had almost thrown aside, the man who had the same eyes as the children they had created, and realized she had nearly gambled away everything that mattered.

  “Everything can stay here, Ben. It all fits where it is.” She stepped into Ben’s arms and nestled her head in the crook of his shoulder. He was solid and strong, and she had forgotten that about him. She had seen the man who let her down for so long that she’d missed seeing the man he had transformed into. The man who was strong enough to be her partner, and the only man who knew her just as she was, with her lists and her planning, and loved her all the same. She was home, and so was he. “And I fit right where I am too.”

  THIRTY

  Getting around you is becoming impossible,” Nora said as she moved to stir the beans sitting on top of the stove. “I think I’m going to have to tape a sign that says Wide Load on your back.”

  Magpie swatted at her older sister. “I’m only six months along, Nora. I’m not that big yet.”

  Magpie made a beautiful pregnant woman, Nora thought. Her sister had that earthy look to her, with her long hair and the maxi dresses that skimmed the floor. She had arrived early for the cookout at Nora’s house, even offering to make a potato salad. She’d forgotten the salt and undercooked the potatoes, but overall, it was a decent first effort. Magpie’s child might not starve after all.

  Outside, Nora could see the kids playing in the yard with Chance. The silly dog even had his own doghouse, built by Ben and modeled after their regular house. Ben was putting the finishing touches on the new swing set he’d built while Jake kept calling out and asking if he was done.

  “Is Ma on her way?” Magpie asked.

  “Yep. Her and Roger. They just got back from Denver this morning.”

  “That’s the third trip they’ve gone on since Christmas. Hasn’t he proposed every single time?”

  “Yup. And Ma refuses to make an honest man out of him. I’m telling you, I think it’s early Alzheimer’s because the Ma we know and love would have never traveled around in sin with a man.” But it was nice to see her mother so happy and to see her finally enjoying a life outside of the bakery.

  She and Roger had gone on some double dates with Bridget and Garrett and come over to play cards with Nora and Ben a couple times. She liked Roger. He had a way of tempering her mother that brought out a whole new side to her.

  Magpie laughed. “I think it’s love. Did you see how giggly she gets around him? It’s almost embarrassing.”

  Nora tasted the beans, pronounced them done, and turned off the heat. “How about you? Any new prospects?”

  “Sister, I have my hands full with the only male I want in my life.” She ran a hand over her belly, just pronounced enough that it looked like she was wearing a small watermelon. “I don’t need a man right now. Maybe ever.”

  Nora added a little salt and then stirred again. “When are you flying out next?”

  “Tomorrow. I’m off to Peru, then Brazil. But I’ll be home in time for Jake’s birthday.” Magpie put her back to the counter and fiddled with the dishtowel. “I was thinking that maybe I should settle in one place for a while. Boston magazine offered me a staff writer position, and I think I’m going to take it.”

  “You, stay still? You’ve never done that.”

  Magpie’s gaze went to the backyard. Under the shade of an oak tree, Bridget, Garrett, Abby, Jessie, and Aunt Mary were sitting at a picnic table. Iris had gotten up to go play with the kids, the girl now as much a part of their family as the rest of the girls. “I don’t want to regret being away from my child. Life is short, you know? And I want to spend as much time with him as I can.”

  “Are you scared about doing it on your own?”

  Magpie laughed. “Absolutely freaking terrified. You know me. I can barely take care of myself. But I do have one ace in my pocket, if you’ll forgive the gambling pun.”

  “Not all risky bets are bad,” Nora said, thinking of how she had come back home to Ben and how everything in her life had transformed. She was taking a pottery class on Tuesday nights and had joined a running group that met three times a week. She had a life outside of her kids and her husband and work, and every day she woke up feeling more centered, more…herself. “So what’s this ace?”

  “The O’Bannon girls.” Magpie draped an arm over Nora’s shoulder. “We may be slightly dysfunctional, but we love each other, and when things get tough, we’re there to hold each other up.”

  “And none of us would have it any other way,” Nora said. Then the back door opened and the dog came charging in, followed by Jake and Sarah. A muddy trail of footprints snaked across the ceramic tile and down the hall and then back again as the trio dashed out to the yard. Nora let the mud stay, picked up the beans, and went out to join her family.

  After years of pretending she had a happy marriage and denying that she missed the friends and family she’d left behind, Bridget O’Bannon is headed home to restart her life. But working alongside her sisters every day at their bakery isn’t as easy as whipping up her favorite chocolate peanut butter cake.

  Please turn the page for an excerpt from

  The Perfect Recipe for Love and Friendship.

  If there was one scent that described the O’Bannon girls, it was vanilla. Not the run-of-the-mill artificial flavoring, but the scent that could only be awakened
by scraping the back of a teaspoon along the delicate spine of an espresso-colored vanilla bean.

  Gramma had always kept a jar of vanilla beans on her kitchen counter because she said they reminded her of how much work God went to just to create a single beautiful note. So many miracles had to dance a complicated tango, all to create one vanilla bean. The orchid’s flower only bloomed for twenty-four hours, and only the Melipona bee could pollinate the buds. Without that bee—or in later years, the intervention of painstaking human cross-pollination—the simple orchid would never become a delicate vanilla bean.

  “No two vanilla beans are exactly the same,” Gramma had said, “like you and your sisters. Each is unique and beautiful and handmade by God himself.”

  It had been Gramma who had taught Bridget the joy of baking. It had been Gramma who had coached her granddaughter through the intricacies of piecrusts and cake batters, guided her hand as she’d swirled buttercream and painted sugar cookies. It had been Gramma who had propped Bridget on a metal stool and woven magical tales about mischievous leprechauns and clever fairies, while the two of them mixed and kneaded and baked and decorated. And it was Gramma she’d been trying to hold on to when she’d worked at the shop. Or at least that was what Bridget had told herself for years.

  Maybe she was trying to hold on to the magic her grandmother had seemed to embody.

  Now Bridget stood on the sidewalk outside Charmed by Dessert and inhaled the familiar, sweet scent of vanilla. It seemed to fill the very air around the little shop, like some confectionary version of the cloud over the Addams Family’s house.

  She hadn’t been here in three years, but everything looked just as it had before. Charmed by Dessert had sat in the same location in downtown Dorchester for three generations, a converted home on a tree-lined block. It was housed in a small, squat white building topped with a bright pink and yellow awning, flanked by a florist on the left and an ever-rotating selection of lawyers and accountants who rented the space on the right. The street was peppered with old-fashioned streetlamps and wrought-iron benches beside planters blooming with flowers.