Spare Change (Wyattsville #1)(4)

“But, what about marrying me?” Charlie asked.

“We’ll talk about it next time,” she answered ruefully.

Charlie, looking square into the face of possible rejection was flabbergasted. He sputtered, “You mean to say you’re undecided?”

Olivia wished she didn’t have to say anything, she wished they could go on day after day, week after week, year after year, never asking any more of each other; never mentioning the one thing that ruined every relationship. She found it virtually impossible to look into his eyes with what she had to say, so she fixed her gaze fixed on a single truffle—a truffle that had fallen from the edge of the plate, a truffle that stood as alone as she herself. “I’m sorry, Charlie,” she mumbled tearfully, “if I were going to marry anyone it would be you, but I’m simply not a marrying woman.” As the words fell from her mouth, she could feel her heart breaking, shattering into a hundred million pieces, each smaller than even a grain of sand. She loved Charlie more than she’d ever loved any man before. Why… her heart was screaming, …why does falling in love always have to end this way?

“Not a marrying woman?” Charlie repeated, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’ve never been one to fit the mold. Cooking, cleaning, babies—it’s just too much dependency, it smoothers a woman and takes the fullness of life from her.”

“Babies?” Charlie echoed, “Who said anything about babies?”

Her answer was one she had stored away in her head, it hadn’t been called upon for years, it had grown old and dusty and obsolete, but she hauled it out nonetheless. “I realize that given your age, babies might not be a thing of foremost concern, but,” she sighed, “who knows what might happen in the future…”

“I’m sixty-eight! Why, it would be impossible for me to father a baby! Besides, I wouldn’t want one—not even if it came in a solid gold wrapper!”

“You’re certain?”

“I only want you. I want us to sleep in the same bed and make love. If you don’t want to cook, we’ll eat in restaurants. If you don’t want to clean, we’ll sweep the dirt under the rug and get on with our life.”

“No children?”

“Children? Absolutely not! I’ve got one and he’s no bargain.”

“You’ve got a little boy?”

“He’s hardly a boy. Benjamin’s thirty-seven—old enough to know he ought to visit his dad now and then; but he doesn’t. I haven’t seen him for over fifteen years.”

“Grandchildren?” she asked; her eyes lovingly locked onto his face.

“Benjamin and Susanna have a son,” he answered wistfully. “The lad’s name is Ethan Allen; but I’ve never even met him.”

The following Friday Charlie slipped a diamond ring on Olivia’s finger and much to everyone’s surprise, it stayed there. And, as if that weren’t enough of a shocker, Olivia then announced she was going to give up her job of thirty years and move to Wyattsville. “I’ve heard tell it’s a wonderful community,” she told her friends, “and, Charlie has an apartment on the seventh floor of a building that does not allow children.”

The announcement generated an endless amount of gossip among Olivia’s friends and co-workers. The girls in the typing pool suggested he might be after her money, or worse yet, be planning to take out a sizeable insurance policy then do her in. “What do we know about him?” they’d ask each other, but the answer was generally nothing more than a furrowed brow and a shrug of the shoulders.

Herbert Flannery, dumbfounded by the turn of events, went out and bought himself a powder blue convertible then took to coloring his hair shoe-polish black.

Mabel Cunningham, a woman who had known Olivia since high school claimed she’d heard rumors of Charlie being a philanderer.

“Not likely,” Francine Burnam said as she stuck a pacifier into her grandbaby’s mouth; her daughter had recently divorced a ne’er-do-well husband and returned home to mama with the infant and two toddlers. “Olivia’s too smart to be taken in by someone like that,” Francine sighed wistfully.

Even the boy who bagged groceries at the A & P seemed to be boggled by the sight of her new diamond ring. “You’re engaged?” he said; then he stood there staring at her while a ripe cantaloupe rolled off the end of the counter and splattered on the floor.

None of this bothered Olivia as she strolled around town shopping for a trousseau and looking every bit the prospective bride. She never noticed how shopkeepers would cover their mouth and giggle when she asked to see bridal veils and blue garters. She paid no attention when Alma suggested rethinking retirement and she laughed out loud when Mabel said she ought to have Charlie investigated by a private detective.

On the third Saturday in October, Olivia Ann Westerly knew what sort of day it was long before she opened her eyes. She’d imagined the sound of wedding bells in a dream which ended far too soon; and she’d caught the fragrance of jasmine even though it was long past the season for such a flower to be blooming. It was a morning that dawned with a sun warm enough for anyone to believe it mid-August—a morning when crows had the sound of songbirds and flowerbeds overflowed with blooms, a morning, no doubt, that was an omen of good things to come.