“Well. Your wife.”
“You won’t find Lila here,” said Tori, grinning. “She says she hears enough about this place at home. She wouldn’t be caught dead hanging out here with all the stories I tell.” She leaned in. “Did I tell you about what we found on the floor last week when we closed?”
“Do I want to know?”
Tori grimaced. “Probably not. Let’s just say we’re going to put up more signs for the bathrooms.”
“Someone—oh, no.” Marianne shook her head. “Nope, I don’t believe that. No one could be that gross.”
“Michaela’s theory is that it was a political statement.” Tori shrugged. “They went right in front of the climate change display.”
Marianne giggled. “That’s horrible.”
“And that is why Lila doesn’t come by,” Tori concluded. “You, on the other hand, have been a frequent visitor lately. So, tell me, what can my lovely wife do for you?”
Marianne sighed. “I need a lawyer, Tori.”
Tori cocked her head to one side, crossing her arms. “What did you do, Marianne? Toilet papered another house after all these years?”
“You know that wasn’t me,” said Marianne. “That was you and Teddy and Ray. Forty years later, and you’re still trying to pin it on me.” She shook her head. “No, it’s for the bakery. For the thing with the property.”
“Oh!” Tori nodded. “I was telling her about that. She seemed pretty interested. You know she loves all that town history stuff.” She smiled. “And she loves the bakery.”
“Well, there’s been some new developments,” said Marianne. “We found a will from my dad that raises some questions, and Kevin says he can’t be my lawyer to try to get it verified, or official, or whatever needs to happen to it. Probate, he said.”
Tori nodded. “Makes sense. You and Kevin get along well enough. Safer not to add anything new and complicated to that if it’s working.”
“I guess.”
“What?”
“It’s just—this is all a lot more complicated than I thought it would be.”
Tori glanced up at the clock and started back toward the desk and Marianne followed. “My lunch break’s coming up. How about we grab a salad, and you tell me about it?”
Marianne nodded. “I’m buying though.”
Tori smiled. “I won’t argue with that. Hey, Michaela?” she called toward the desk as they passed.
Michaela glanced over, her cheeks warm, pulling her eyes from the man sitting on the other side of the desk. He had one hand over hers and released her fingers when she looked up. “Yeah?”
“Going to lunch. See you in an hour.” Tori grabbed her coat from under the printer table. “Call if you need backup. We’ll be right down the street.”
“Got it, boss,” said Michaela, already back in conversation. The man looked familiar, but Marianne couldn’t place him. Somebody’s brother, probably, someone she’d known in passing. In a small town, everyone was related to someone you knew.
*
Marianne had never been to Lila Shapiro’s office. She wasn’t surprised to find the room as sharply neat as Lila herself, all squared corners and polished wood and brass. She even had one of those green desk lamps she’d expect to see in a bank. If she hadn’t been a friend of the family, there was no way Marianne would be able to afford her.
“So the first thing we’re going to need to do is file this in probate,” said Lila, leaning back in her chair. “Until we do that, it’s nothing but old paper.”
Marianne smoothed the folder down, its edges fuzzy with age though she’d wiped it down to get rid of fifty years of’ dust. Her fingers brushed her father’s handwriting on the tab, tracing the letters. “That’s what Kevin said.”
“Now that’s a couple forms that we have to fill out and then bring to the courthouse. They’ll take the will and give us a copy; then we can start looking into the situation. You said there’s some debate over the sale of the part of the property that’s now the Cairo Grill?”
“That’s right,” said Marianne. “According to this, I don’t think my father actually sold it. And we can’t find any record of a sale in the town archives.”
Lila grinned, teeth sharp and white. Marianne had never seen this side of her, this professional, laser-focused side. She’d only see the side Lila showed around her kids and Tori—the warm, smilingly competent maternal side. This was different. She’d always been cute, but Marianne had a sudden new appreciation for Tori’s choice of wife. This was a woman who could hold her own in any situation she wanted to. “If that’s true, we’re going to make sure he pays. Not just for the original trick—for all the years of rent he should have been turning over to you.”
Marianne gulped.
She called Kevin the next morning to catch him up on the situation. She could usually count on him being home Saturday mornings—he’d always liked to have a leisurely time with the paper on the weekends. The phone rang long enough that she’d begun to wonder if he’d changed his routine, but he finally picked up, a little out of breath.
“Hey, Kevin,” she said.
“Marianne!” He said, sounding surprised. “What’s going on? Is it the kids?”
“No!” She rushed to reassure him. “I wanted to tell you about meeting with Lila. Is this a bad time?”
“Uh, no,” he replied. “So, you officially hired her?”
“Yes, but I’d like your input. I can head over in a couple minutes, if you’re decent. I’ll make you coffee, and bring over those scones you like, with the bacon in them.”
“No!” Kevin’s response was quick. “No, I’ll come by. Is this afternoon okay?”
Marianne paused. A sneaking suspicion was rising in her. “Kevin?” she asked.
“Yes, Marianne.” He sounded resigned.
“Do you have someone over there?”
“What?”
She grinned. “A special visitor? You picked up some lonely single lady on a Friday night, didn’t you?”
“No!” Kevin’s response was louder than before, and he cut himself off and lowered his voice. “No, I didn’t! No ladies here, nope.”
“Oh, come on.” She thought for a minute, a slow smile spreading over her face. “Kevin?”
“Yes?”
“Did you pick someone up last night and have them spend the night?”
Silence on the other end.
“Oh my god. Kevin, did you pick up a guy last night?”
The silence stretched.
Marianne waited him out.
Finally, Kevin said quietly, “Maybe.”
Marianne tried not to laugh because she didn’t want Kevin to think she was laughing at him. Thirty years together—more than that, actually—and deep down she’d always thought he was just as bisexual as she was, with his Tom Cruise fixation and his shirtless James Bond artwork in the rec room. No, she was laughing in delight and vindication. Only she really couldn’t start laughing out loud because Kevin’s pride probably wouldn’t take it, and this call was, originally, to ask him a favor.
“All right,” she said instead, stifling her glee. Of course, two queer people would have married each other. Of course, they’d have been drawn to each other back then. And, of course, it fell apart under the weight of their own individual closet-case neuroses. “Well, I’m happy you had a nice evening.” She paused. “You did have a nice time, right?”
“Yes,” Kevin admitted. His voice held a surprising shyness. “I did.” He cleared his throat. “And I’m not telling you anything else, because this conversation is already weird enough.”
“That’s definitely fine,” said Marianne. “I’ll see you this afternoon then? I can give you the update, and you can at least tell me what you think I should do?”
“I will,” said Kevin. “Just give me a few hours.”
She laughed aloud this time, finally, and thanked him again, promised to make a batch of peanut butter cookies as well in payment, and then hung up the phone.
So Kevin was bi, too, or at least a little bit queer; however he chose to identify when he got that figured out. What would that have meant if he’d been able to explore that while they were married? Sometimes she wondered if things would have worked out better had they been in a different generation, one where conversations about the spectrum of sexuality and gender were more open and nuanced than they had been in her and Kevin’s suburban 1970s childhoods.
At least her kids didn’t have the same societal damage she and Kevin had had to overcome. The three of them could be who they were, whatever that turned out to be. None of them were settled yet—Anna was dating a person whose pronouns and chosen name were currently in flux, and Janie had just dumped that Rudy guy the previous August and had been dating a new girl for the past few months—but they knew that whoever they brought home to Swanley, their identity wouldn’t cause trouble at home. Although given Jacob’s affinity for women who walked off with expensive items from his apartment, never to be seen again, she reserved the right to be skeptical of his potential romantic partners.
And she wondered, too, if all the new conversations about the asexual spectrum would have changed things. Maybe knowing there was a name for how she felt would have made it easier to manage Kevin and her mismatched libidos and make their relationship work. But maybe not. They were better friends than they’d ever been spouses, even if he drove her up the wall sometimes.
Marianne closed the apartment door behind her, finally heading down to the bakery to get the ovens going for the day’s baked goods. As she rolled out dough, she thought about Rana.
If she and Kevin hadn’t divorced, she certainly wouldn’t have met Rana in the way she did. She would have been living miserably out in the big house on West Springfield while Rana shivered alone in the Cairo Grill with no heat and no electricity the day of the big storm. Or she might have tried to drive home, and something terrible might have happened.
Marianne shivered, casting the thought aside. She had been there, and she and Rana had clicked in a way Marianne hadn’t with anyone in years, maybe ever. Certainly not since those first few years with Kevin, if even then. It was so long ago, now, and she found it hard to dredge the feeling she’d had back then. And the angst was all so mixed up in the expectations around her dad and the bakery, and her dad’s depression and health issues, she wasn’t sure where one ended and the next began.
She liked Rana. They’d only known each other a short time, but somehow it felt longer. Rana knew her ex-husband, and she’d met Rana’s daughter. They’d spent hours and hours together, and though they’d clashed occasionally, the spark had been palpable. And it was new, the thing they’d had; it didn’t have the strings that tugged back through her life, pulling on all the pieces of herself she’d shed as she’d aged. She and Rana had met as the fully formed people they were now—capable of change, still growing, but not deep in the trenches of figuring out who they were.
She slid a tray of cookies into the big oven and then a rack of bread into the other one. She needed to stop dwelling on Rana, and what could have been. And all the problems with Leventi and the suit could wait until the afternoon and Kevin’s visit. She turned on the radio and tried to focus on the croissants. At least she’d gotten to sleep in somewhat—she didn’t know if she could have dealt with any of this after waking up at three in the morning.
*
When Kevin finally slunk into the bakery around two thirty in the afternoon, Marianne was busy with a family of tourists looking for directions back to the highway. She saw him out of the corner of her eye and finished handing the adults their coffee and making sure they had a clear idea of where they were supposed to be going. Finally, they headed back out to the street. She hoped they’d find their way. She wasn’t confident they would. But that left her and Kevin alone in the bakery.
He avoided her eyes, focusing on the paper he’d grabbed off another table, until she set a mug of coffee in front of him.
“It’s decaf,” she informed him. “You look like you’ve got enough anxiety without the caffeine giving it a boost.”
He took the coffee and leaned back in his chair. “What did you want to tell me?” He asked, clearing his throat.
Marianne smiled. She’d had a feeling he’d want to ignore the subject of his night. Kindly, she let him get away with it. “Lila’s going to help me file the will,” she said. “And she said we’re going to sue him too. If we can prove he’s not the owner, then he owes me all the rent he’s charged.”
“She sounds like she’s doing a good job,” said Kevin. He took another long sip of coffee. “The will first, though, right?”
“Yeah. We’re going to head over to the courthouse tomorrow and see if we can get the paperwork filed. Once that happens, we can get more information.” She considered him for a moment. “You look good, Kevin.”
He glanced up at her, meeting her eyes, and smiled. “Do I?”
“Except the bags under your eyes from what looks like a late night, yes. You could have told me, you know. If anyone wasn’t going to judge you for being interested in men, it’d be me.”
He sighed, drumming his fingers on the coffee mug. “I know that.”
“So why didn’t you say anything? I mean, other than it being none of my business after we got divorced.”
He shook his head. “I don’t know, Marianne. I guess I wasn’t ever sure. I had you, and I’d always been with women, and being with men seemed—I don’t know, unnecessary. Complicated. Difficult. I didn’t need anyone else because there were plenty of women in my life. It never came up, I guess.”
“And now?”
He shrugged. “I was at PJ’s last night. I started talking about the Patriots with a guy I’d never seen around town. Things escalated from there when PJ’s closed.”
“You had fun though?”
Marianne was delighted to see Kevin’s cheeks pink. “Yes.”
“Well.” She patted his hand. “I’m glad. Only took you sixty years, but I’m glad.”
Chapter Eighteen
At least she knew no legal nonsense on the other side would be happening over Christmas either. Lila had warned her it would be unlikely they could file the will before the county closed for the holiday, and she’d been right. So, they’d set a date of December 26th to meet at the courthouse, and Marianne tried not to stress herself too much about it.
Christmas Day, she always opened the bakery, though she gave herself a few hours off in the morning like the day before. She opened around eleven, and her first customers wandered in a half hour or so later as she pulled a tray of blueberry muffins off the cooling racks to set in the display case.
“Just a minute!” she called from the oven around the corner. “I’ll be right there!”
“It’s fine,” called a familiar voice from the store. “Take your time!”
Marianne hurried back around the corner with the tray, smiling at Tori and Lila and their twins, who sat at a table kicking their feet. The kids had to be at least eight now, though Marianne couldn’t imagine how they could be so big already. She remembered when they were born, Tori agonizing over whether she was too old to be a mom at fifty-two, and Lila joking that she was one of the only lesbians in the world who could have a baby genetically related to both her and her wife. It seemed like a few months ago, not nearly a decade. “Hi, guys!”
Tori stepped closer, leaning in. “We promised them baked goods,” she said conspiratorially. “They know all their friends are getting presents right now for Christmas.”
“Hanukkah wasn’t enough for them?” asked Marianne.
“Hanukkah ended two weeks ago,” said Lila. “They’ve already forgotten it.”
“Well, you don’t see their friends out here getting to pick muffins, do you?”
Tori grinned. “Exactly.” She turned. “Sarah, Davey, you want to come pick something from Miss Marianne?”
Davey sprang up and ran over, nearly knocking over a table on the way. Sarah follo
wed a little more sedately, face serious.
“Hi, David. Hi, Sarah,” said Marianne. She bent down a little to meet Davey’s eyes. “What would you like today?”
“A chocolate one!” He pointed at the croissants. When Lila cleared her throat meaningfully, he added, “Please? And Sarah wants a muffin.”
“Sarah, do you want blueberry or cranberry?”
Sarah stared at a point behind Marianne’s head and stood on her tiptoes to look through the glass and then dropped back down, considering. After a moment, she pointed at the blueberry ones.
“She wants blueberry,” said Davey.
“They might be a little hot. Is that okay?”
Sarah nodded. Marianne grinned. “Great! Let me get you those.” She looked up at Tori and Lila. “And coffee for the grownups?”
“God, yes,” said Lila. “Huge coffees.”
“Enormous,” Tori agreed.
Marianne laughed. “Coming right up.”
Since there was no one else waiting, Marianne made herself a coffee as well and brought the food and coffees out on a tray instead of calling for pickup from the counter. “Sit with us a few minutes?” asked Tori, patting the seat beside her. “I haven’t seen you lately, not as much as Lila’s gotten to.”
Marianne glanced at Lila, who smiled and waved at the seat. “We’d love to have you join us,” she said.
“I don’t want to interrupt your family time,” said Marianne. “Especially now that I’m Lila’s client.”
Tori rolled her eyes. “No talking about the legal stuff, and we’ll be fine.” She patted the seat again.
“All right,” said Marianne. “How’s the library?”
Tori shrugged. “Same old place,” she said. “Caught some kids trying to sneak a bottle of wine into the Russian lit section. Reminded me of old times.” She smiled at Lila. “Marianne and I used to hide out in the library sometimes, back in the day. Remember the time we snuck in a whole pie?”
Marianne laughed. “I can’t believe they hired you.”
“All the librarians who knew my secrets had already retired. So, no one suspected me.” She waggled her brows. “Especially once I transitioned. The perfect crime!”
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