A Country Affair(104)

Her work was done for the day and her immune system was now boosted, which meant there was no putting it off any longer. She had to go to Costco and purchase those food supplies for her friend Camilla, the caterer. Camilla almost always did her own shopping but she was swamped and one of her employees was out sick, so she’d begged Sophie to help her out. The big warehouse store would be a zoo, full of people carrying all kinds of germs. This time of year people were walking petri dishes. No one stayed home when they were sick anymore. She’d take more vitamin C before bed.

She was reluctantly moving toward the closet to get her coat when her sister called. “Are you working?” Sierra asked.

She usually worked straight through lunch, eating an apple (an apple a day and all that) and some yogurt (probiotics, good for the digestion) while she surfed the internet on behalf of her clients. Today she’d gotten done early and once she’d braved Costco she was going to curl up on her couch with a cup of rooibos tea and stream a Hallmark movie.

“Just finished,” she said. “You on your lunch break?”

“Yeah. Thought you might have a minute to talk.”

A minute to talk. Obviously about how Sierra’s plans for the night before had gone. There wasn’t any excitement in Sierra’s voice. That wasn’t a good sign.

“Sure,” Sophie said cautiously. “What’s up?”

“Murder.”

“Oh, no. Mark didn’t like his Christmas surprise?” How could he not?

“He can’t go.”

“Can’t go? Why not? Is the Grinch holding him for ransom?”

“He says he doesn’t have enough vacation time left and, anyway, he’s swamped.”

Sophie frowned in disgust. Really, Mark was such a waste of man sometimes. “Why can’t he, like, talk to his boss, borrow from next year’s vacation time or something?”

Could you do that? Sophie had never been Miss Corporate America. Before she turned her shopping passion into a business, her jobs had been the kind that involved plates of food and tips. So what did she know?

“I don’t know. I talked to his boss months ago, told her what I was planning. She said she’d be fine with it.”

“Maybe his boss forgot about your conversation and needs him. Maybe he really does have too much work to do.”

“Or maybe he just doesn’t want to go with me.” Sierra’s voice was threaded with insecurity.

“What man in his right mind wouldn’t be working every angle to go on a glam holiday cruise? With his wife,” Sophie hastily added.

“Mine, I guess. I mean, I know things haven’t exactly been perfect these last few months, especially with him working so much, but we still love each other.”

Correction: they both loved Mark.

This conversation was going to take a while. Sophie took a bottle of juice out of the fridge and settled on her living room couch, put her feet on the coffee table and looked out the window. Her studio apartment had a great view...of the apartment across the street from it. That was what you got when you lived in Seattle and worked not at Amazon.

“I’m sorry, Sissy,” she said. Sorry your man is turning out to be such a subpar husband.

Mark had a selfish streak that had been widening over the last four years. He was constantly frustrating Sierra by blowing their budget on expensive toys—a new car, that fancy watch he’d just had to have, pricey tickets to football games, which he attended with his buddies, a bigger and better TV. Sierra, the budget-conscious one, had tried to rein him in, but they were now five years into their marriage and the reins were pretty much broken.

Which made it all the more mystifying why he wasn’t moving heaven and earth to take this trip. It should have appealed to him, considering his family’s German roots and his love of extravagance. Sierra had been paying for the cruise for months.

“I swear if I wasn’t such a good wife I’d poison him,” Sierra said, the insecurity replaced with anger.

“Well, there you go. He senses danger and he’s afraid to be alone with you in a stateroom,” Sophie teased in an effort to lighten the moment.

“He’s afraid to be alone with me in the bedroom, for sure,” Sierra grumbled. “Afraid I’ll poke a hole in his condom.”

“TMI. Pleeease.”

“Sorry,” Sierra muttered.

“You guys talked about this stuff before you got married. Didn’t he say he wanted kids, or am I misremembering?” Sophie took a drink of her juice. Orange juice. A little extra vitamin C never hurt.

“Yeah, eventually. But I’m thirty-four and he’s thirty-five. Eventually is here.”

“You still have time. Thirty-four’s not that old.”

“Yes, it is.”

“No, it’s not.” If thirty-four was old, then thirty was middle-aged, and Sophie wasn’t ready for that. “I’m sure you can convince him to change his mind.”

“I’ve been trying, believe me. He thinks we can’t afford a baby.”

Maybe not, with the way he liked to spend money. Poor Sierra.

“It seems like we’ve been arguing so much lately. I was really looking forward to us getting away. I thought he was going to love this.”

Sophie knew that Sierra had been excited to present her husband with the gift of a Christmas cruise the night before. She’d planned to make a recipe for Rouladen, a German dish she’d found online, and then serve him German chocolate cake for dessert as a warm-up for the big moment. She’d been so sure that this cruise was just what they needed to get back that honeymoon high.