Page 67 of The Lost and Found Girl

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BIRTH ANNOUNCEMENTS—To Marianne and Jackson Martin, of Pear Blossom, OR, a baby girl, Ava Helene Martin, born at Rogue Valley Medical Center September 5, 2007

MARIANNE

“Do you think Dahlia is going to dye her hair pink and start going through another rebellious phase?”

Marianne walked out of the bathroom, rubbing at her face in a circular motion, making sure every last bit of her luxurious (expensive) moisturizer sank into her skin. She looked over at her husband, who was grinning at her, the lines around his mouth deeper than they’d been seventeen years ago, but she could still see the boy there who had first stolen her heart. She could see him with the years and without them and loved both. Just as she still loved him.

“Why exactly?” she asked.

He shrugged his shirt off, chucking it in the hamper by the dresser—God bless the man, it had only taken ten years to train him to do that—and walked over to their bed, sinking down onto the pale blue bedspread.

“Because she always gets weird when Ruby is in town, and now she’s going to be here for... For good?”

“As I understand it,” Marianne said, “Dee and Ruby are really close.”

“Sure,” Jackson said. “But that doesn’t mean you don’t have...sibling stuff there.”

“Sibling stuff,” she repeated, turning to the mirror above the dresser and adjusting her bun.

“I’m just going to take it down,” he said.

She shot him a flat look.

“They’re close in age,” he continued. “It makes it a thing. That’s why Asher drives me nuts,” he said, talking about his brother who was only a year and a half older than him. “I was always so close to everything he did, but not quite as good. Until I outgrew him. And Ruby is...well, she’s Ruby.”

“We’re all close,” Marianne said. “I don’t know what to tell you.”

“All right, but I’m going to place bets. Pink hair by Christmas.”

“All right, I’ll take that bet.”

He lay back on the bed, and she cataloged the movements of his muscles as he did. They’d been married for seventeen years. His body was a familiar enough sight, but she still enjoyed it.

It might not be with that same sort of recklessness that had overtaken her when they’d met in their early twenties, but it was definitely there.

She could both check him out and have a conversation with him at the same time.

Necessary, all things considered. They had lives. She couldn’t get lost in lust every time she looked at him.

And there was so much life. Marianne felt buried in it sometimes. Helping Lydia with Riley and Hazel, trying to help shoulder her grief.

“We should have Christmas with your family again this year.”

“Jackson...”

They had a deal that they were supposed to split the holidays between his family and hers, and they’d done Christmas with the McKees last year.

“It’s the first year with Mac gone,” he said, his voice getting heavy at the mention of his brother-in-law. “I don’t think we should miss Christmas Day too.”

Marianne couldn’t disagree with that, but of course if her mother-in-law did, it would be Marianne who heard about it later, not Jackson.

And if her parents weren’t so... So damned terrible when things were dark, then maybe they could just go on as they’d originally planned. But as much as Lydia was distant, and that was her choice, Marianne knew some of it was just the learned coping mechanisms of a McKee.

Her teenage years had been... Grim.

She didn’t even like to think about them. She’d just been so dark and depressed all the time and her parents had left her to it. Ignore it, and it’ll go away.