Page 98 of Keep

You are about to meet the woman your boyfriend was married to for fifteen years. The woman who figured out he was gay before he did. The woman who knows every single thing about him that you’re still learning.

Don’t be weird, Chad. Just don’t be weird.

“So you’re the one who’s been making my ex-husband smile like an idiot.”

Shelby MacPherson turned from the stove with a wooden spoon in one hand and an expression that was equal parts curiosity, amusement, and something sharper underneath. Honey-blond ponytail, laugh lines, barefoot in jeans and a Vanderbilt sweatshirt. Prettier than her photos. More formidable, too.

She crossed the kitchen and pulled him into a hug before he could decide whether to offer his hand. Vanilla and fabric softener and the confidence of a woman who had never once in her life wondered whether she belonged in a room.

“It’s so good to finally meet you,” she said, stepping back but keeping her hands on his shoulders, examining him with frank appraisal. “Hank talks about you constantly. To the point where I’ve considered blocking his number.”

“All good things, I hope.”

“Mostly.” Her eyes were doing something—reading him the way he read customers, the way Frannie had read him at the gallery. Different method, same purpose. “Hank, honey, go help Lowell with the grill. Chad and I are going to talk.”

“Should I be worried?”

“Deeply.” Shelby’s smile was sweet and absolutely lethal. “Go.”

Hank caught Chad’s eye—you okay?—and Chad nodded. The screen door banged shut, and it was just the two of them, the kitchen, and the smell of whatever was in the oven.

“Sit,” Shelby said. “Sweet tea?”

“Please.”

She poured him a glass. Cold, startlingly sweet, nothing like the unsweetened iced tea from the Manassas kitchen he was not going to think about right now. Shelby settled across from him with her own glass and studied him for a moment that went on just long enough to be deliberate.

“So,” she said. “Tell me about my ex-husband.”

Not tell me about yourself. Not how did you meet? Tell me about Hank. The test was immediate and specific: Do you see him? The real him?

“He checks his mirrors too much when he drives,” Chad said. “He lists every beverage in his apartment when he’s nervous, like he’s reading a menu. He thinks he’s smooth, and he’s the least smooth person I’ve ever met, and that’s—” he stopped. “That’s what makes him work.”

Shelby’s expression warmed by one degree.

“He orders for other people at restaurants,” Chad continued. “Not in a controlling way. He just wants to make sure everyone’s taken care of before he thinks about himself. He makes breakfast like it’s a special occasion. And he cannot—cannot—lose at cards. I beat him at Rummy three times in a row, and he didn’t speak for an hour.”

“Two days,” Shelby said. “Honeymoon. I skunked him.”

“So it’s a pattern.”

“It’s a disease.” Shelby was smiling now—really smiling, the testing look softening into something Chad recognized as relief. “He’s happy, isn’t he? Not performing happy. Actually happy.”

“Yeah.” Chad turned his glass on the table. “He is.”

“I can see it. It’s in his voice when he calls. In the way he talks about you.” She leaned back in her chair. “I spent fifteen years married to a man who was trying so hard to be what everyone expected that he forgot to figure out what he actually wanted. Watching him figure it out now—even from a distance—” She shook her head. “It’s something.”

The oven timer beeped. Shelby got up to check it, and Chad sat with his sweet tea and the odd, vertiginous feeling of being approved of by someone whose opinion mattered more than almost anyone’s.

“Can I ask you something?” he said when she came back.

“Honey, I’m an open book. Worst quality.”

“Did you know? When you were married?”

Shelby was quiet for a beat. “I suspected. The way you suspect the weather’s going to turn—you can feel it, but you keep hoping you’re wrong.” She traced the rim of her glass. “We were happy for a long time. But there’s a version of happy that’s really just two people being very, very careful with each other. That’s what we were.”

She said it without bitterness. Like she was describing weather that had already passed.