Page 28 of Marriage (Red, White &) Blues

“Did Grandma hire new help?” the boy asked and I started.

Help? This little boy thought I was the help?

“No,” the woman said indulgently. “This is your Uncle Blake’s”—she scrunched up her nose as if smelling something unpleasant—“new wife.”

The little girl walked up to me and I knelt down. “You look like Merida,” she said.

“I do, don’t I?” I said back. “My name is Gloria. What’s yours?”

“Corrine,” she answered.

Blake knelt down next to me. “Since Glory’s my wife, that makes her your aunt.”

“Aunt Gloria?” the boy asked as he approached, holding his hand out for me to shake. I took his offered hand. “I’m Lauden.”

“Lauden? That’s a handsome name,” I said.

“It was my mom’s last name before she married my dad.”

“Well, that’s very smart. It gives you a connection with your other family.”

“If you and Uncle Blake have a son, will you use your last name?”

Now, as I’d told Blake last night, I loved my last name. I was proud of it. But I just didn’t know how I felt about Kowalski as a first name. I laughed at the thought. “Probably not.”

Blake’s mother cut in. “Of course, she wouldn’t.”

“Come along, Laud,” Emily, his mother, said and the boy looked between me and his mother’s outstretched hand. He nodded once and walked dutifully back over to her. Then she and the children left for the dining room again.

“She’ll have to lose some weight,” Brockton said, andwhat? Who said that about someone they’d just met right in front of that someone?

“Gloria is perfect exactly the way she is,” Blake defended me.

“Honestly, brother. People will take one look at her and think you’re gay. No one would marry a woman like her unless they were hiding something.”

“I want to go,” I whispered to Blake.

“Right.” He dropped his hand to the small of my apparently massive back to turn us when his mother spoke up.

“Oh, for goodness’ sake. No one is leaving. Brunch is waiting.”

“It’s up to you,” Blake said. I thought about it, and these people were my new in-laws. I had to at least give this brunch one more chance.

“I’m giving it an hour, then I’m leaving.”

Right as he was about to answer, the front door burst open and a gorgeous woman with thick, light-brown hair flowing down past her shoulders and deep-brown eyes sauntered in. She wore an A-line sundress, pink with slim spaghetti straps. Simple yet elegant in its own way. Her heels matched the color of her dress.

“Sorry I’m late,” she said to the room before dropping her gaze specifically to me. “Oh, my… what a scandal.”

Great.Now I was a scandal?

“Glory, this is—” Blake started to introduce the younger woman, but she pushed between us, spinning me around to get a better look at me.

When I faced her again, she said, “I’m Jupiter, Blake’s younger sister, and you are everything I hoped you’d be.”

“Ju,” Blake admonished.

“What?” she asked more defensively than innocently. “I bet you can’t stand it, can you, Mother? She couldn’t look less likeold Vermont money if she tried. I bet you even have one of those ethnic names too, don’t you? Given your red hair, I’d say O’Malley or Fitzgerald.”

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