Page 84 of Grown-Up Second Chance

“No.” I wasn’t ready to yank my guts out of my body in front of anybody, least of all my somewhat critical sister.

“Message received,” Kathleen said. She picked up the cozy mystery she’d been reading.

We were silent for a few moments as we read. The local tabloid was a mixture of old-fashioned news like a fiftieth wedding anniversary celebration and a farmer’s report that aliens had made a shape of the president’s head in his alfalfa field.

“I knew it was the president,” the farmer had explained. “It’s got those big ears, you know the way he does.”

The world had gotten stranger since I was a kid. Back then the mysteries were far simpler: Who really killed Jack Kennedy? Why did Nikita Khrushchev bang his shoe on a desk?

“Marriage isn’t always easy,” Kathleen said, putting down her book.

“I know that.”

“Michael and I were so young when we got married. We had no clue what we were doing.”

“Age has nothing to do with it,” I said. “None of us really know what we’re doing.”

“All I knew was I loved Michael and thought he’d be a good father for our kids.”

“That’s way ahead of some people. I think some people get married just to legitimize the wild sex they’re having.” I picked up my coffee. “And then it gets weird. I had a friend—I had to cover my ears when she told me some of the things she and her boyfriend were doing.”

“Eww.”

“Exactly. Why don’t some people realize there are things a person doesn’t really need to hear?”

“Like what?” Kathleen leaned closer.

“You don’t want to know.”

“I kinda do. My experience was … um … limited.”

“Missionary all the way?”

“A little better than that,” Kathleen said and shook her head. “But not much. It fizzled out once the kids were teens. My doctor kept asking me how my sex life was—why do they get to ask that? I told her it was about as to be expected.” She leaned toward me. “So what did they do? Was it like that fifty shades book?”

“I think there was a little of that too. But the worst was she said they had another woman with them.”

“In bed?” Kathleen’s mouth stayed open.

“Yep.”

“Gross. Why would they do that?”

I shrugged my shoulders. Late at night when my mind wouldn’t turn off, I sometimes tried to figure out how that would work, but my mind didn’t twist in that direction.

“So they got married,” I said.

“And?”

“It stopped. All of it. He told her she was now his wife, and wives didn’t do that kind of thing.”

“He didn’t happen to mention this beforehand?”

“Nope. Told her he hadn’t realized how he’d feel.”

“What did she do?”

“She stayed with him and adjusted,” I said. “She realized she was getting a little old for all the cavorting, that he was a good man, and she wouldn’t do much better.”

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