annulment. I didn’t let my mind wander too long as to the purpose of their visit. The look on my face must have conveyed other emotions or feelings because Crawford went into full mea culpa mode.
“Listen, I don’t know how many times I have to tell you this, but I’m sorry.” He tried to look at me, but couldn’t.
I didn’t respond. What was there to say? I knew that he was sorry, but it didn’t mitigate my feelings of humiliation of having met the wife I didn’t know he had.
“I don’t know what I have to do to make this up to you.” He rubbed his eyes, either just plain tired, or tired of this conversation.
I spoke quietly but made my point. “You just have to get divorced, or annulled, or whatever it is that will make you available.”
He nodded, almost imperceptibly. He had mentioned to me that he had finally signed his divorce papers but, in doing so, had promised his wife that he would go through the annulment process, her main stipulation in dissolving their marriage, but a process in which he did not believe. It was the proverbial catch-22: he would be free of his marriage, but have to compromise his ethics in the process. And I knew Crawford well enough to know that that caused him more than a few sleepless nights.
So while the papers were signed on his end, I didn’t know if Christine had signed them as well and I certainly wasn’t going to ask. Crawford was nothing if not intensely private and while I was dying to know how long this would take, I resisted the urge to probe him further on the subject. Kevin had hinted that an annulment could take upward of two years and that left me in a bit of a moral quandary: would I hold out that long or compromise my own ethics by dating a technically still-married man?
“What’s the matter?”
I realized that I had been staring at him the whole time that I had been working all of these details out in my brain. And I also realized that while staring at him and working out those details, I had inadvertently thought about my date with Jack. Damn that brother McManus and his straight white teeth. They had left quite an impression on me. “Nothing,” I said, and took a bite from my sandwich. I looked out the window.
“You seem, I don’t know, nervous,” he said, and leaned in a bit. “Are you blushing?”
“No,” I protested, my mouth full.
“You are,” he said, a bit amazed. “Now, why would you be blushing?”
I shrugged and smiled nervously.
“Does it have anything to do with the…”—he paused dramatically—“date you went on last night?” The look on my face must have been priceless, because he burst out laughing. “Alison, if you’re going to go out on a date and you want to keep it a secret, make sure you’re not on television.”
I swallowed my food and gulped slightly. “Sorry?” I said.
He looked at me and it appeared that he was deciding whether or not to be angry. The tables had turned and now we were off his divorce and onto my dating life. I looked down at my sandwich, crumbled egg falling out of the side of the roll. That coupled with the acids in my stomach churning took away any feelings of hunger that I had.
“How was the hockey game?” he asked, smiling.
“It was great. Bouchard had a hat trick,” I said casually.
“I know. I watched it on TV,” he reminded me.
“Right,” I said, nodding.
“Are you going to go out with him again?” he asked. He finished the sandwich, and pulled a few napkins out of the holder, wiping his fingers.
No, I thought. “I don’t know,” I said out loud. Big mistake.
“Oh.” He shoved his napkin and paper plate into his coffee cup; the look on his face told me that that hadn’t been the right answer. God, it was getting so I could almost teach a class in sticking one’s foot in one’s mouth. “Are you bringing him to the wedding?”
“God, no,” I said. I thought that was obvious; I was the matron of honor and Crawford was the best man, so he was my date. But he really had gotten the wrong idea watching me on my televised date.
“Well, how would I know that, based on your last answer?” He stood. “I’ve got to go. I have to go to work.”
I stood and pulled at his sleeve. “Wait.”
He looked