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“Did you not hear the euphemism under my words? I am not aworld traveler. I have not slept with European men. I have not slept with anyone but my husband, in point of fact, so I am owed stories.”
Marianne was nothing if not dramatic. Always.
And had been so since she was a teenager.
“Gosh,” Dahlia said. “If you wanted to hear stories of disappointing extramarital sex, you could’ve always asked me.”
“The Italian guy was not disappointing,” Ruby said. “Cannot say the same for the French guy.”
“Shame. Details on the French Disappointment,” Marianne said.
“Well. I think I was supposed to feel exceptionally grateful. But honestly I was bored. He wanted to watch a black-and-white movie after? I really wanted to leave.”
“And... Did you?” Dahlia asked, interested in spite of herself.
“Yes. Because, I feel that as it was my sexual exploration, I was free to do as I wished.”
“Good for you,” Marianne said. “I support you in theory.”
“Do you wish that you...are you—” Ruby looked at Marianne keenly “—sad that you’re not a world traveler?”
Another thing Dahlia was curious about, in spite of herself.
“No,” Marianne said. “I love Jackson. I love him entirely and completely, with my heart and my body. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to hear stories of people who are more adventurous than I.”
“Well, I had some adventures.” Ruby shrugged. “That was the point.”
“It was why you broke up withDarling Heath,” Dahlia said.
Ruby tilted her head back as if she could not contain the force of her eye roll. “Don’t call him that. We are not thirteen.”
“I’m sorry,” Marianne said. “I can’t take a real live man named Heath seriously.”
Ruby sniffed. “That’s because you never read the classics. It’s close enough to Heathcliff to appeal to me greatly.”
“But not when there were European adventures to see to.”
“I didn’t think it was fair to either of us. Anyway, he went away to school too.”
“And he is also back,” Marianne said.
Ruby shrugged. “Good for Heath.”
“Are you too busy for Heath?” Dahlia asked.
“Well, I report to Dana starting next Monday. So yes. I’m going to be pretty busy. There hasn’t been an actual archivist at the Pear Blossom historical society for years. And I think most of...everything has just been kind of left in boxes.”
Marianne grimaced. “I’m not sure why you’re subjecting yourself to working with Dana Groves.”
“IlikeDana,” Ruby said. “Anyway. She’s sad. People shouldn’t be so mean.”
“She’s mean,” Marianne said.
“People are mean to her,” Dahlia said.
She was not one to see the best in people, but she and Ruby had worked with Dana at the museum, where she coordinated living history programs around town.
Dahlia was notorious for her defense of Dana, and that wasn’t even an exaggeration.
