He Cheated With My Friend, My Parents Helped novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Clove and Cumin

Colin comes home early smelling of her mother's cooking, and his phone shows her father's order to keep Jean away until Christmas Eve. Colin says her parents want them both there.

I had four minutes before Colin reached the top of the stairs.

I put the agreement back in the safe, spun the dial, and slid the pen into the drawer where it lived.

Then I stood in the hall and made my face look like a woman who had spent the day alone.

The door from the garage opened.

"Jean? I'm home early."

He came up the stairs with a bunch of grocery store tulips in one hand and his coat over his arm.

He kissed my forehead.

I let him.

"The Denver meeting wrapped up," he said. "I caught the last flight so you wouldn't be alone all weekend."

His text had said he was stuck out of town, and his coat said Bellevue.

His coat smelled of cumin and clove.

It smelled exactly like my mother's kitchen.

"That's sweet," I said. "I was going to eat leftovers."

"You cooked?"

"I stayed in. I wasn't feeling well."

He looked at me for a second with his good eye, and I stepped to his left, where he couldn't see me coming.

I had learned to do that without thinking.

He tilted his head, found me again, and smiled.

"Poor thing. Sit down. I'll order Thai."

"Not spicy," I said.

"I know, Jean. You hate spicy."

I thought about that while he opened the app.

He knew it.

He had sat at my father's table and watched Simone eat a plate of food I would never have touched, and he had known why they made it.

We ate on the couch.

He told me about the hotel in Denver, a long line at the front desk, a conference room with no windows.

He was good at it.

He had always been good at it, and I had always believed him.

I asked one question, to see how he'd answer.

"Did you call your brother while you were out there? It's been a while."

Colin's fork stopped.

"Nathan doesn't want to hear from me, you know that."

"I thought it might be time."

"He made his choice three years ago," Colin said. "He took your side, and I'm not going to chase him."

I had never said anything about sides.

I picked up my carton and said nothing.

After dinner he went to shower.

He left his phone on the kitchen counter, face up, charging.

I didn't touch it.

I washed the two plates, dried them, and stood by the sink with my hands flat on the cold counter.

Water ran upstairs.

The phone buzzed and lit up.

The preview was from my father.

"Keep her away from the house until Christmas Eve. Cor's shower is the 14th. Don't slip up."

I read it twice.

A baby shower, at my parents' house, on the fourteenth.

I took out my own phone and photographed the screen, then put it back exactly as it had been.

The preview faded and the phone went dark.

I stood there with my pulse in my ears.

It wasn't only that they had hidden her from me.

My father had a date on his calendar for this baby.

Colin came down in a clean t-shirt with his hair wet, and the left side of his face turned toward the light.

The eye was clouded and still, and the scar ran up through the brow.

I had looked at that eye every day for three years and felt guilty every time.

"Your mother called," he said, pouring a glass of water.

My head came up.

"When?"

"This afternoon. She wanted to tell you herself, but she didn't want to bother you on a holiday." He drank. "They want us at the house for Christmas Eve."

"Us."

"Both of us. She said she and your dad have been thinking about how it's gone for the last three years, and they want to make it right."

He set the glass down.

"I told her you'd love that."

He was smiling.

It was the same smile he used when he'd already decided something and I had only to nod.

I thought about the fourteenth, and the chair at my parents' table that had been set for Simone, and the one I had never been offered.

"Christmas Eve," I said.

"Yes."

"Then I'll bring a pie."

I made myself laugh.

Colin laughed too, and reached for my hand, and I let him hold it.

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