Page 76 of A Crazy Kind of Love
Howard grunted and put the paper down. Then I saw the dark hair that Eden had inherited. From what I could tell, she’d also gotten a fair portion of her dad’s more withdrawn personality. Micah claimed all the bubbling vivaciousness from their mother.
When Howard came around to shake my hand, he did a solid job of pretending he wasn’t put out. “It’s very nice to meet you, Josie.” And then he retreated to his chair and disappeared behind his paper.
Secretly, I loved this display of long-suffering matrimony. Ridiculous as it might seem, this was my dream. I had no use for empty professions of love. I wanted a committed relationship through good times and bad, in sickness and in health. Not for as long as we both had swooping feelings. Couples like Peg and Howard might seem bored with each other on the surface, but I’d observed enough older couples to recognize an invisible yoke tied them together and made them as dependent on one another as if they were a pair of conjoined twins.
Peg looked from Micah to me and back. “So where did you meet?”
Micah’s eyes twinkled. “She was walking the street.”
Undaunted, Peg followed up. “Which street?”
Micah led me over to the patio table and held out a chair for me. Eden greeted me with a wicked grin. “Hey. I noticed our trick didn’t pan out.”
Micah said, “She’s got you turning tricks, too?”
“Goodness! Look how pretty Josie’s hair is,” Peg said. “Eden, look at how she manages to keep her curls so untangled. What do you use, Josie?”
Eden’s rueful expression nearly made me do a spit take. I got the feeling this wasn’t the first time she’d been on the receiving end of an inadvertent insult. Her mouth twisted into a half smile. “Come inside, Josie. There’s plenty of food.”
Peg’s hands flew up. “Oh, yes. Come on inside.”
All of us except Howard went in through the sliding doors into a family room that had time-traveled from the 1970s. I followed along to a more recently renovated kitchen. On the island sat an assortment of choices: a Crock-Pot filled with melted cheese and specks of red pepper, a casserole dish of miniature hot dogs in some kind of brownish-red molasses, fried white bread filled with either mayonnaise or cream cheese, and bags upon bags of chips.
“Help yourself,” said Peg. “And we have strawberry soda, or if you’d like, I can make you a nonalcoholic margarita.”
“What’s in that?”
“Mostly sour mix and 7UP.”
I stared at all the poison, trying to figure out the nicest way to insult this woman. But then Micah casually announced, “She can’t eat any of that, Mom. She’s diabetic.”
Eden frowned. “Lucky.”
Peg declared, “My cousin’s diabetic. She has to get shots every day. Do you?”
“No, ma’am.”
Micah laughed. “She’s part robot.” He went to the fridge and started pulling things out. “How about some milk and . . .”
It was cute watching him try to figure out what I could eat based on the limited time he’d spent with me. He pulled out celery and peanut butter and a deviled egg.
“Mom, do you have any wheat bread or crackers?”
Eden said, “Can you fix me something, too?”
Peg touched Eden’s forehead. “Are you feeling okay, Eden? You look a little pale.”
“I always look pale, Mom.”
“You’re not sick, are you?”
Eden made eye contact with me for a second. “I’m fine, Mom.”
Once Micah handed us each a plate and a cup of milk, Eden said, “Come with me, Jo. I want to show you those pictures I told you about.”
She walked toward the front of the house into a sitting room where a digital frame flipped through random pictures of Micah and Eden. Some were from when they were children. Micah held a guitar in most of them. But when he didn’t, he made funny faces or stood in front of accidentally inappropriate road signs or intentionally inappropriate props.
“Aw. That was taken the summer before Micah left home.” A younger version of Eden and Micah sat on the driveway in front of this very house. Eden’s hair was shorter, curlier. Her arms and legs were sticks. The girl next to me now had filled out, or she was putting on weight.
