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Risking my life, I grab our plates and swap them again, setting them down with a clatter as Minka reaches tall for glasses from the cabinet up high. “Do you want soda with caffeine?” She glances over her shoulder, smiling as I hurriedly pull back and set my hands in my lap. “Or juice? Water?”
“Water’s fine.” I sneak a green bean from her plate, because I’m actually starving, and grimace around it when my homicidal wife looks my way.
“I’m so glad you like those. I know I haven’t cooked a lot since we moved in together.” She fills my glass at the sink and comes back to sit down, all too innocently. “But I know how to do it. I’ve been fending for myself my whole life, remember? I had to learn to cook once the excitement of cereal for dinner wore off.”
“Makes sense.” I chew slowly. So fucking slowly, the bean practically turns to a paste in my mouth. “We should probably discuss what happened today. With the, uh… cuffs.” I pick my water up and take a short sip. “I was wrong to do tha?—”
“It’s okay.” Settling in again, she takes her knife and fork and cuts into her steak. “You made your point about my constant interference with your work. And in the end, you acted protectively. Besides,” she tosses a small piece of steak between her lips. “Tim and I had a nice time.”
Slowly, contemplatively, she chews her steak and turns her knife.
It’s sharp. It’s serrated. And it could gut me like a fish if she strikes out.
“I guess it was a good chance to realize that, although Tim and I were always friendly, we’ve never really hung out, ya know? Besides those couple of days when I first moved here, my time with him has always included you.”
“Is that…” My stomach rumbles with hunger. “Is that a bad thing? Not having private time with another man?”
“Of course not.” Sugary-sweet she cuts another slice of steak, but she offers it across the counter and smirks when I accept it. “But he’s not just another man, right? He’s my brother-in-law. And I feel like everything has moved so quickly this year; it’s like we’ve skipped a couple important parts of creating a family. The bar wasn’t crazy busy, and Daisy was there. So I convinced him to come here for a little while.” Eyes alight, Minka looks down at my untouched plate and questions, “Not hungry?”
“Uh…” My heart skips painfully in my chest, and existential dread makes it easy for me to not eat.
She wouldn’t actually kill me, right?
“I’m sorry…” I sit back on my stool and study her expression. “Fletch and I ate not that long ago. If I knew you were cooking, I would have waited.”
“Oh, it’s okay. No big deal.” Carefree, she picks up a green bean and bites the end off with a snap of her teeth. “I know you would never intentionally hurt my feelings. I hope your interview went well.”
“Um… yes?” Why the fuck do I sound like I’m asking a question? “Didn’t quite get what we went looking for. Anderson was?—”
She lifts one hand in a stop motion and happily goes back to eating. “Don’t tell me.”
“Don—” Stunned, I tilt my head to the side. “Don’t tell you about my case?”
“No. I feel we came to an important conclusion today. Your work is yours, and marriage does not give me a right to interfere.” She grabs another green bean and offers it across. “I’m not a cop, and I cannot expect special treatment purely because my husband is the primary on cases that interest me.”
“You don’t?” Curiosity makes my brain fuzzy. It makes my lips form an ‘O’ and my face to look stupid. “You don’t want special treatment anymore?”
“No. I would like to go to how things are supposed to be. Me, as medical examiner, hanging out at the morgue and running my cases straight down the line.”
“And me…” My mouth drops open, a guppy fish, when I realize she didn’t finish her thought mentioning me. “And you want to work with me, right?”
“I don’t think that’s best.” She scoops potatoes onto her fork and smiles. So fucking pleasant. “The lines we’ve blurred this year have led us to a place where you feel you can’t do your job without my intrusion. It led to me being cuffed to another human being. I’m not mad.” She slides the fork between her lips and chews. “Life is far less stressful for us both when we’re not bringing work home.”
“Wait—”
“So I propose a change.” She slices a large chunk of steak from her portion and offers the fork my way. “Let’s keep it at the office.”
“It?”
“Yeah. Work.” She hums her approval when I accept the steak and chew. “Normal marriages include talk about Friends reruns, paying the electric bill, and grocery shopping. Which, by the way,” she picks up her knife and points it my way, “I realized I have not done once since you moved in.”
No shit.
She lives on sunshine, coffee, and whatever food either Aubree or I shove into her hands.
“Proper marriages are supposed to include discussions surrounding Christmas and Thanksgiving. Oh, and it was Tim’s birthday two weeks ago. Did you even know that?”
“Well… yeah.” My forehead tightens into a frown. “He’s my brother. Of course I knew.”
