Nearlyweds

by Beth Kendrick

  “Sounds peachy.” I sighed. Maybe it was me. I didn’t want to be one of those screechy, possessive wives who exploded into a jealous rage every time her husband called his mother. How degrading, not to mention clichéd. Maybe I should just take a step back and—

  “You stay in Miami as long as you like, dear. Take a few days extra to shop, get your hair done. I know how you love to shop. Even though the two of you both have some hefty student loans to pay off. And now you’ve got the mortgage, too…”

  This was my cue to heap praise upon her (again) for gifting us with the twenty-thousand-dollar down payment for our house, but I was fresh out of gratitude. I heaved myself off the bed and hunkered down to rummage through the minibar. “May I please speak to my husband? Please?”

  She sighed, sounding truly regretful. “Oh, it would just break my heart to wake him.”

  I twisted the top off a miniature bottle of Absolut with my teeth and spat it out. “Please?”

  “Don’t be selfish, darling. Just because you’re on vacation doesn’t mean David gets a vacation.”

  I snatched up a three-pack of chocolate truffles to go with the vodka. “I am not on vacation. I am at a medical conference.”

  She seemed to sense she had pushed me too far. “Well, don’t worry, the house will be spotless when you get back. And I bought some new drapes for the den. The ones you put up really didn’t go with the carpet and the davenport.”

  “Thanks.” I crammed a truffle into my mouth. “And, um, when will you be leaving?”

  The tinkly laugh returned. “Can’t wait to be rid of me?”

  Yes. “No, of course not! I just don’t want you to put yourself out.”

  “It’s no trouble, Erin. We’re family now, not to mention neighbors.”

  I threw back my head and guzzled the mini-bottle of vodka.

  “Oh, and you got a letter today from the county clerk.”

  “Okay, well, put it aside and—”

  “I already opened it. And guess what?” Her voice soared in sudden triumph.

  “What?”

  “You and David aren’t legally married.”

  5

  STELLA

  Surprise, sweetheart!” Mark puffed up his chest as he strode into the kitchen. “I got you something.”

  I reached into a cardboard box marked “pots/pans/misc,” grabbed a mystery item swathed in paper, and unwrapped what turned out to be a blender. “A vasectomy reversal?”

  His smile disappeared. “Stella. We’ve been over that and over that.”

  We sure had. For the past ten weeks, while we’d written our thank-you notes to wedding guests and moved into the new house and had dinners with all of Mark’s married friends and pretended everything was blissful, the tension had been steadily mounting. But I couldn’t seem to force a direct confrontation with Mark, and to be honest, I didn’t want to; we hadn’t even been married three months. I knew what people had said behind my back as I’d planned the wedding: She’s too young. He’s too old. Gold digger meets midlife crisis—I give it a year. No way would I give them the satisfaction of being right. We were going to be happy, damnit, even if it killed me.

  I reached into the box and pulled out another wad of paper. “We’ve been over it, but that doesn’t mean we’ve solved anything.”

  He sighed. “Sweetheart, I understand that you want to have a baby, but you’re going to have to accept that vasectomy reversal’s not a realistic option.” He leaned back against the gigantic Viking stove he’d insisted on installing, even though he knew I survived on takeout and Lean Cuisine. “Can’t we please table the topic until next week? Let’s not ruin our first Thanksgiving in the new house. I want us to have good memories to look back on at our silver anniversary.”

  Silver anniversary, my ass. He just didn’t want his daughters to see us bickering and report back to his ex-wife that Daddy and his new bimbo trophy wife weren’t getting along.

  Hmm. Now that I thought about it, I didn’t want that, either. No sense loading Taylor and Marissa up with more ammunition.

  So I tried to remember that we should still be in the honeymoon mood and asked, “Okay. I’ll try. Now what’s the surprise?”

  “Ta-da!” He whipped out a tiny pink leather dog collar, glittering with jeweled studs and a heart-shaped silver tag.

  I took a step back. “If this is your way of trying to talk me into some freak show, S&M bondage fantasy—”

  “I’m getting you a dog!”

  “A dog.” I gave him the dead eye.

  “A puppy. Specifically, a maltipoo.”

  I frowned down at the bedazzled collar. “A whatie what?”

  “A maltipoo. I found a breeder in New York and put our name on a waiting list as soon as we got back from our honeymoon. The litter’s due right before Christmas. You said you wanted one. Remember?”

  “Like a maltese-poodle mix?”

  “Right! White, fluffy, nonshedding. Like that singer has? You said it was the cutest dog you’d ever seen.”

  I squinted at him, trying to remember any of this.

  “You did,” he insisted. “Back when we first started dating. You said you used to love that show with that blonde singer and her husband, and you said he gave her a puppy onstage at a concert and it was a grand romantic gesture because he’d wanted to get a big dog instead.”

  “A husky,” I murmured, a blush creeping into my cheeks. It was all coming back to me now: my youthful obsession with the reality show Newlyweds. Before Nick and Jessica’s scandal-soaked tabloid divorce. Before I’d married a man who’d pulled a vasectomy bait and switch on me.

  Just a few short years ago, I’d been stupid and sappy enough to believe that my future marriage would turn out like the expertly edited fairy tale I’d seen on TV.

  “What’s wrong?” He looked disappointed. “You don’t want a dog?”

  I squared my shoulders. “A puppy is not the same thing as a baby.”

  Guilt seeped into his voice. “I know.”

  “This isn’t going to change my mind,” I warned. “About anything. Not now, not after Thanksgiving.”

  He didn’t say anything else.

  “Call the breeder,” I snapped. “Tell her to sell that guiltipoo puppy to someone else.”

  Then I ran out into the frosty November chill, crossed the brick-paved circular driveway, and fired up the blue BMW convertible—Mark’s wedding gift to me—that had no room for a car seat in the back.

  As I gunned the coupe down our deserted suburban street, I called my mother and told her everything.

  “A dog the size of a toaster, Mom. He thinks that’s going to make me forget about having a baby.”

  I waited through the usual pause as my mother dragged on her customary morning cigarette. “Cutting back to one a day is almost the same as quitting,” she’d said defensively. “And with what’s happened with your father, I need all the stress relief I can get, so don’t you dare judge me.” I imagined her sitting at the sunny breakfast bar in the airy, lakeside house I’d grown up in (that was about to be foreclosed), sipping tea from a bone china cup so thin it was almost translucent.

  “Well, no one ever said marriage was perfect. Why don’t you wait and see what happens? Maybe you’ll end up adoring this dog.”

  I tapped the brake as the car approached an intersection. “The dog is not the point, Mother. The point is, he lied to my face about having children. That’s fraud. That’s grounds for annulment.”

  She gasped. “Stella Rose, I don’t ever want to hear that word come out of your mouth again! Mark may not be perfect, but he loves you. He stuck with you through all that messiness with your father’s company—”

  By “messiness” she meant embezzlement and insider trading and an ongoing stint at a white collar prison, but I wasn’t allowed to let any of those words come out of my mouth, either.

  “—and he can provide for you.” I heard a clatter as she replaced the teacup in its saucer. “Let’s face it, darling
, even if your father’s attorneys win the appeal, we just can’t take care of you the way we used to.”

  “I can take care of myself,” I insisted.

  Her laugh was brittle. “Oh, please. As an au pair?”

  “I was a nanny, Mom; don’t be pretentious. And for your information, I liked being a nanny. I loved the kids, and I made decent money.”

  “Stella.” She had put on her best Steel Magnolia voice. “The Goddards hired you as their au pair so you would have room and board while you went to college. They employed you as a favor because your father and Mr. Goddard go back to Princeton. But you are meant for better things than child care, darling.”

  “I’m meant to be a mom,” I said flatly. “AKA, full-time child care with no paycheck.”

  “You won’t need a paycheck; you’ve got Mark. And you’d be well advised to hold on to him. A good man is hard to find.”

  “You mean a rich man is hard to find.”

  “All I’m saying is, marriage takes compromise. Perhaps if you had taken my advice and majored in business or finance, we wouldn’t be having this discussion, but you insisted on studying, what was it? Early childhood development? And then you didn’t even finish your degree. You’ve put yourself in a very untenable position, and now you have to make the best of it.”

  I gripped the steering wheel even harder. “But he had a vasectomy, Mom! And he didn’t tell me until after the wedding. I mean, who does that in real life?”

  “Stella, what did I always tell you?”

  I sighed and repeated her worn-out old catchphrase: “You never know a man until you marry him.”

  “That’s right. Now, enough with the temper tantrums. Take the puppy and make the best of it.”

  “But he’s my husband!”

  “Exactly. And now you’re finding out what he’s really like. He’s a good man, but he’s still a man. You can’t expect too much.”

  Part of me wanted to reach right through the phone and strangle her. The other part was horribly afraid she was right. Maybe I should stop worrying about my needs and start focusing on his. How could I call him selfish when he gave me every single thing I asked for except a baby?

  I hung up and considered turning the car around and apologizing to Mark. For about two seconds. Then I stomped on the gas pedal and took a right on County Road 56. Mark had shown me who he really was; now it was my turn to show him.

  6

  CASEY

  I had just finished ringing up Mrs. Adelman’s purchase—fifty-five cans of cat food for her ever-growing band of ferals and strays—when Dr. Porter’s new wife walked in. We hadn’t actually been introduced, but the whole town had been buzzing about her ever since Dr. Porter had proposed with the gigantic diamond that Taylor and Marissa swore cost them their future inheritance.

  Dr. Porter had gotten married over Labor Day weekend—the same weekend as Nick and I—and rumor had it his new wife was a ruthless, gold-digging, material girl whose CEO father was embroiled in the biggest corporate scandal since Enron. Since he’d split with his first wife, Brenda, ten years ago, Dr. Porter had dated steadily, but all of his previous girlfriends had been a little less flashy…and a little more age appropriate. So when he’d finally popped the question to a poor little rich girl half his age, everyone in town practically got whiplash rubbernecking at the impending scandal. There were at least two active betting pools going at the Blue Hills Tavern—one on how long the marriage would last (the current over-under was eighteen months) and one as to how long the citified Ms. Porter could hack it out here in the sticks (the smart money said she’d force a move to Manhattan by Memorial Day.)

  But with her long, shiny black hair, milky skin and huge blue eyes, Stella Porter didn’t look ruthless. She looked like a younger version of Jennifer Connelly. You couldn’t help staring—girls like her just didn’t live in Alden, Massachusetts.

  She stood stock-still in the store’s doorway for a moment, her face frozen in a tentative half smile. I wasn’t sure if she was confused or just “making an entrance” in her red wool coat and spotless black boots before she deigned to come in and let me serve her.

  Then those clear blue eyes locked on mine.

  “Excuse me,” she said in a small, shy voice. “Is it all right if I bring a dog in with me?”

  “Sure.” I jerked my head toward the sign in the corner of the front window reading Pets Welcome.

  She glanced back over her shoulder. “A big dog?”

  “Sure,” I repeated, losing patience as the arctic November wind blasted in. “But do me a favor and shut the door, okay?”

  “Oh. Right.” She hurried inside, dragging a dog behind her on a filthy, fraying leash.

  I’d pegged her for a Havanese owner. Maybe a bichon frise or a poodle. But the dog on the other end of this leash was no pedigreed, pampered puppy. It was, well, a behemoth.

  “The lady at the shelter said he’s a Great Dane mix,” she explained when she saw my reaction.

  “Mixed with what?” Mrs. Adelman demanded. “A Clydesdale?”

  I watched the burly black blur of matted fur scrambling wildly to escape the confines of his collar and leash. “Newfoundland, probably. Maybe some Rottweiler?”

  She dropped the leash as her hands flew to her mouth. “Rottweiler? Really? Do you think he’s vicious?”

  The dog saw his opening and took off. His nails clicked against the tile floor as he raced toward the bags of kibble at the back of the store.

  “He doesn’t seem very aggressive,” I pointed out as the dog stopped running to sniff a 30-pound bag of holistic food. “Forget what you hear about Rotties on TV—most of them are big babies.”

  But Mrs. Adelman wasn’t taking any chances—she collected her bags of cat food and held her spine ramrod straight as she stalked out the door. As the cowbell hanging on the door jingled behind her, I turned back to Stella. “You got this dog from the pound?”

  She nodded, her cheeks pink. “Twenty minutes ago. But, I have to tell you, I’m having second thoughts. He doesn’t even fit in my car—I had to put the top down and it’s freezing out there—and I have no idea what he likes to eat and he probably has a zillion kinds of worms and fleas…”

  Her voice trailed off and her eyes widened as she contemplated the ramifications of what she’d just done.

  “What’s his name?” I asked gently.

  “He doesn’t have one. He just had a kennel number. Like a prisoner.”

  “No, I mean, what are you going to name him?”

  She watched with dismay as the dog grabbed a bag of dry food between his teeth and shook his head back and forth.

  “I don’t know. ‘Bad Dog’?” Grimacing, she wiped at the dirt the makeshift leash had left on her fingers. “Do you happen to have a tissue I could use?”

  I managed not to roll my eyes at her princess routine. She was going to be the kind of pet owner who bathed her dog in noxious floral-scented toxins every weekend and screamed bloody murder if he dared place a single paw on the couch. Forget Great Danes—this chick should’ve gotten a stuffed animal.

  “Thanks,” she said as I handed over a paper towel. “I’ve really screwed up this time. I guess it goes to show, you should never go to the pound when you have a fight with your husband.”

  “I guess,” I said neutrally. “’Cause when the fight ends, you’ll still have the dog.”

  She nodded. “How long do Great Danes live, anyway?”

  “Not that long, by dog standards. Eight, maybe ten years.”

  “Ten years? Seriously?”

  “Sure, if you keep them healthy. But Great Danes and Newfoundlands are tricky breeds. You really have to stay on top of all the medical and nutrition stuff. Big dogs have a lot of joint problems. They’re prone to hip dysplasia and arthritis, not to mention bone cancer, bloat…”

  “Bloat?” She wrinkled her nose. “That sounds gruesome.”

  My reply was drowned out by a sharp ripping sound as the dog tore open the bag. Dr
y kibble pinged across the floor like BBs.

  “Oh God. Sorry.” She knelt down and started scooping handfuls of food back into the bag while the dog commenced gorging himself. “I don’t…this dog…I didn’t really think this through.”

  “Yeah, you mentioned that.” I grabbed a red nylon Martingale collar from the display rack, along with a thick leather leash, and headed toward the dog.

  Stella rocked back on her heels and looked up at me as I looped the collar around the dog’s neck. “This was a huge mistake.”

  “What? Getting a Great Dane?”

  “Everything. Just…everything. Hey, do you want him?” she offered hopefully as I scratched the dog behind the ears. He closed his eyes, leaned back into my hand, and luxuriated in the affection.

  “Nope. My apartment doesn’t allow dogs. Besides, I have two cats, and they wouldn’t exactly be thrilled to have a canine roommate.”

  “Then I guess he’ll have to go back in the shelter.” She resumed scooping up dog food.

  “Back to the shelter?” My eyebrows shot up to my hairline.

  “Yeah. I can’t possibly…I don’t know the first thing about taking care of dogs. Especially giant ones.”

  I glared at her. “Tell me you’re kidding.”

  She wouldn’t meet my gaze. “Well. It wouldn’t be fair to the dog to—”

  I jerked my hand up and launched into one of what Nick referred to as my “spirally eyed animal-rights rants.” “Listen. Stella—”

  “How did you know my name?”

  “Everyone knows who you are. You’re the nanny who married Dr. Porter.”

  She looked stricken. “Oh no. You’re friends with Taylor and Marissa, aren’t you?”

  “Not really, but this is a small town. Word gets around. So listen, Stella. Perhaps this little detail has escaped your notice, but dogs? They’re living creatures. They’re not like shoes or handbags. You can’t just get buyer’s remorse and return them. And I have news for you: no one else is going to adopt this dog.”