Couldn’t he at least try? Try to find what he’d once liked about his job? Try to find what he’d once liked about her?
It had been like he didn’t want to talk. Not to her, anyway.
This was not confidence inspiring. But the shiny fresh paint was. And so was remembering last night’s final text, from Kenneth:
Breakfast? Tell all?
Be ready with coffee. I’ll be there when you open.
See you at o dark-thirty.
That at least was something to look forward to.
Kenneth was waiting for her behind the counter, cup in hand, ready to brew.
“You always were my dream man, Kenneth, and now you’ve achieved true perfection,” she said.
“Taken, so very taken,” he replied. “Which is obvious. You, on the other hand, much less obvious. You wear a ring, it is true, but you do not exude the beatific joy of the beloved that shines from my very soul. So let us go there immediately, since you bring it up. Why has your better half never, to my certain knowledge and you can be sure I have checked, graced our fair town?”
Nobody got her like Kenneth. Mae stood there, waiting for her coffee, and didn’t offer the flippant answer that would have been easiest. This was why friends sucked. There you were, keeping things safely tucked away in their own spaces, and somebody like Kenneth came along and just pulled everything out, kind of the way Mae used to when she was hired to organize a closet.
That wasn’t really a good comparison. Out of sight, out of mind was a bad idea for clothes but not for problems, which sometimes really did go away if you just avoided them for long enough.
Kenneth, carrying two cups, walked around the coffee bar and set them both on a table. His foam made a perfect heart; hers, a floating question mark.
“Screw you,” she said, without rancor, and sat down, dumped in three packets of sugar, and ruthlessly stirred away. “I am happily married.”
She was, too. For now. “Why would you home in on that, anyway?” she asked. “I’ve done a zillion other things since we graduated, and you just want to know who I’m shagging?”
“Everything else about you is wide open. I can find out what you had for breakfast a week ago last Tuesday in three different places. But your delightful-looking husband, other than the occasional photo op, remains shrouded in mystery. Although I do note that holding hands with him, in some parts of this state, might in fact earn you more than a few sideways glances. Is that why he stayed home?”
“God no. That really doesn’t—I bet it doesn’t happen any more for us than it does for you. Less, even. He’s American. Yeah, his family is from India, so maybe once in a while somebody says something, but mostly no.”
Kenneth waited, perfect eyebrows raised. Mae licked her spoon. It was true—Jay’s brown skin (and Madison’s and Ryder’s, for that matter) wasn’t the norm in Merinac, but neither was it entirely out of the ordinary. The crowd at Mimi’s last night had been much more diverse than the one she went to high school with. And Jay was also a tall, good-looking rich kid who carried an air of privilege everywhere he went. She knew he felt his differences—it was one of the things they shared, especially at the very WASPy consulting firm, a feeling of being an outsider—but she wasn’t going to pretend to Kenneth that Jay’s background had anything to do with his absence.
“Jay just wouldn’t get Merinac,” she finally said. “Plus, he kind of thinks it’s Kansas City.”
Kenneth hooted, and Mae smiled a little. It was funny. She’d worked so hard to hide the differences between the way she was raised and the way Jay was raised, and she’d been so successful.
But it also wasn’t funny. Because if she’d been less successful, if Jay and his family had seen through the cracks to the total void where Mae’s supposedly solid middle-class background was supposed to be, maybe she wouldn’t be stuck trying to convince someone who had never really worked for anything that you didn’t give up everything you’d worked for. But that would mean no Madison, no Ryder . . .
Mae might really need to fall back on that no-regrets policy.
“Kansas City.” Kenneth laughed. “Well, maybe if you brought him straight to the Inn. Blindfolded. Seriously, Mae?”
She shrugged. “We swore we were never coming back, right?”
Kenneth took a sip of his latte. “You also swore you were never