like that was an odd question. “Matt, I told you, I fell for a musician. A singer with a guitar. He played other instruments, too, but mostly guitar and piano. What I didn’t tell you, I was a groupie. He was in and out of Portland and for three years I followed his gigs. He called when he was in town or even near town, like Seattle or Vancouver or Astoria, and would ask me to come. It was nothing for me to drive three hours just to be with him. On and off, off and on. He’s ten years older and even though he’s had a few breaks here and there, he doesn’t really have a pot to piss in. He wasn’t interested in marriage or family or settling down, though he did move in with me because I had a freestanding garage he could use as a studio. So one night when he said, ‘Hey, babe, maybe we should just get married,’ I jumped on it. Brilliant, yes? I was all over it because hey, I was over twenty-five by that time and all I’d ever really wanted was to be a wife and mother. So I married a self-centered, absent, maybe even adulterous musician who rarely remembered to even call me. My mother thought I’d lost my mind. My brothers hated him. My father still wants to kill him. I married him as fast as I could before he changed his mind. We were married for seven days when he got a job in San Francisco of uncertain duration and he not only took it, he said I wouldn’t enjoy myself, given his terrible hours, and besides, I had to work. He said he’d probably be back in a few weeks. Turned out it was sooner, but he left again a week later, that time for a month. When I tried to talk to him about it he said, ‘Hey, I told you I’d be a lousy husband. I’m just not into it. My music is really important to me and I’m so close. Baby, I’m so close. And you love my music.’ Also, he usually needed money. And I stupidly gave him what I could.”
Matt’s mouth hung open. He was speechless. If there was one thing about the Lacoumette men, they would die before they’d live off a woman. “You’re making this up.”
She gave him a rather patient smile. “I could not make it up. I fell for a singer because he had what I thought was a beautiful voice and I believed that once he saw how happy I could make him, he would never want to leave me again. Oh—he would write music and play music, but our love for each other would come first. That was the lie I told myself. There was one part of the equation I hadn’t taken into consideration. He didn’t love me.”
“You married him when he hadn’t even said he loved you?” Matt asked.
“Of course he said it,” she said. “He said it all the time, along with a lot of beautiful things. Sometimes I even heard them again and again in songs he wrote. He was extremely romantic. But he didn’t mean them. He’s a poet, Matt. A dreamer. A liar.”
“And you left him?”
“Sort of. I left after he told me he just couldn’t do it—that whole traditional marriage and family thing. He sat me down, told me how wonderful I was, how he didn’t deserve me—boy, wasn’t that the truth. And he said it just wasn’t for him. No wait, he said it wasn’t his scene.” She took a sip of her wine. “I thought he’d change his mind, come around. He didn’t. I know you know, Matt. That I lost a baby to SIDS.”
“How do you know I know?”
“Because everyone knows. It’s kind of strange—I thought that might be terrible, having everyone know. But it’s not. It’s easier, in a way. Because I don’t have to explain to anyone that yes, I have baggage. Heavy baggage. My newly pregnant friends are so careful—they try not to talk about their happy new pregnancies too much. I wish they didn’t have to guard my emotions like that. But it’s so thoughtful, don’t you think?”
“I’m sorry, Ginger. Sorry for your loss. Yes, Peyton told me. If she hadn’t, I don’t know how I would have guessed. You seem...” The sentence trailed off.
“Normal?” she asked. “Catch me some early, early morning when I wake up from a dream and