The Imperfect Marriage novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: Home Visit

We had five hours to look like a couple who had been married for nine days.

We had been married for one.

Pru arrived at eight with her six-year-old son, a bag of lemons and the energy of a woman running a heist.

"Okay," she said. "Rules. Kiss in the kitchen. Touch each other on the way past. Ross, you cannot say the word 'schedule.'"

"I don't say it that much."

"You said it a dozen times in the truck yesterday."

"You were not in the truck yesterday."

"Dagny told me."

"I did not."

"Your face did."

Her son sat on the counter swinging his legs and eating a banana with great concentration.

"Are you my aunt now?" he asked me.

"I think so."

"Do you like dinosaurs?"

"I love dinosaurs."

"Uncle Ross doesn't. He says they're a fad."

"They've been around for two hundred million years," said Ross, from the stove.

"That's not a fad," I said. "That's a career."

Pru snorted into her coffee, and her son decided I was a fine aunt.

By eleven the kitchen smelled like burned toast, because Ross had tried to make breakfast to look domestic.

I opened the windows.

The doorbell rang at ten to noon.

The executor was seventy-four, a retired judge, no taller than my shoulder, in a navy suit and sensible shoes.

She walked in without waiting to be asked, looked at the kitchen, and sniffed.

"Burned toast," she said. "Good. A bachelor's house would smell of nothing."

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