Page 178

“I’ve got a question, but I want food, and so do the animals. I’ve got this part covered.” Owen went to feed the pets.

“What’s the question?” Sonya asked as she got plates.

“How’d you hook up with an asshole?”

“Jesus, Owen.”

“No, Trey, it’s a fair question—and I’ve asked myself the same. The answer’s really twofold. First, he hid the asshole really well for quite a while.”

“I have to agree there.” Cleo pulled out the fries. “I nearly liked him. I mostly liked him because of Sonya, but I nearly liked him, and I’ve got an excellent asshole meter.”

“He was great with my mother, and that’s important to me. He was supportive at work, interested—or seemed to be interested in what I had to say. Attentive without being smothering, easy with my friends, and all of it.”

When they sat at the table, she hunched her shoulders. “It wasn’t until after the engagement that I started to see little things, then bigger ones. For the most part, I thought it was just my own nerves or the stress of planning this big, elaborate wedding. Doing a house search, all of it at once.”

“Which you didn’t want,” Cleo pointed out.

“Which I didn’t want. On that fateful day—before I knew it would be that fateful day—I realized there were things we had to address, talk out, come to better compromises on. Then, well, no need for that.”

She sampled a fry, smiled. “The second part, and it’s really the first? I wanted, I really wanted, to start to build what my parents had. The problem with that, other than him being a lying, cheating asshole?We didn’t want the same things at all. I’d just started to understand that when—fateful day.

“I’m grateful for that fateful day because—and I’ve done a lot of soul-searching on it—I wouldn’t have gone through with it. The wedding. I’d probably have sent the invitations out, gotten that close, which would’ve been horrible. But the closer we got, the more he showed me, and the more unhappy and just unsettled I felt.

“So there you have it.”

“Legit,” Owen decided, and pointed at Trey. “Howie Queller.”

“Yeah.” Trey shook his head. “Friend of ours. High school and beyond. A few years ago, the three of us are having a beer, what, about a week before his wedding?”

“About that. And he all of a sudden pops up how he doesn’t want to do it. Doesn’t want to get married, how he’s stuck now. Trey’s soothing him some. Got the jitters, you love her, right? And Howie’s saying how he thought he did, but he doesn’t. He’s not ready, and she wants this and that, and he doesn’t. Trey’s, man, you gotta talk to her, figure this out. How you don’t want to make promises you can’t keep.”

“And you?” Cleo asked.

“Owen said: ‘You don’t put a ring on someone’s finger unless you want it to stay there. If you don’t, don’t.’”

“Now Howie’s all but crying in his beer about how excited his mom is, how her dad’s spent all this money, how Alma—that’s the bride—can’t talk about anything but the wedding. So he gets married.”

“We handled the divorce under a year later,” Trey finished. “And it wasn’t pretty.”

Sonya ate some lobster roll. “I could’ve been Howie.”

“Nah.” Owen grabbed more fries. “Howie’s a moron.”

When they’d eaten, talked, when the kitchen was put to rights again, Cleo moved toward the mudroom for a jacket.

“I’m going to walk out with Pye and the boys, and call it early.”

“Early’s good. Thanks for bringing dinner, Owen.”

“No problem. I’ll walk out with her, and go from there. I still have things to get to.”

When they went out, Sonya turned to Trey. “I’m trying to be sorry you were angry on my behalf. A little at me, but mostly for me.”

“Mostly for, yeah. I know his type; I see them in court. I don’t like that you had to deal with him.”

“That’s why I can’t really be sorry. Come upstairs with me. I missed you. I missed being with you.”

But first she held him. “I’m really, really glad I wasn’t Howie.”