Money.
That was the real obstacle. Sara had a lot more money than Will. The same had been true of her marriage. She would never forget the look on Jeffrey’s face the first time he’d seen the balance in her trading account. Sara had actually heard the squeaking groan of his testicles retracting into his body. It had taken a hell of a lot of suction to get them back out again.
Bella was saying, “And of course I can help with any taxes, but—”
“Thank you.” Sara tried to dive in. “That’s very generous, but—”
“It could be a wedding present.” Cathy smiled sweetly as she sat down at the table. “Wouldn’t that be lovely?”
Sara shook her head, but not at her mother. What was wrong with her? Why was she worrying about Will’s reaction? She had no idea how much money he had. He paid cash for everything. Whether this was because he didn’t believe in credit cards or because his credit was screwed up was another conversation that they were not having.
“What was that?” Bella had her head tilted to the side. “Did y’all hear something? Like firecrackers? Or something?”
Cathy ignored her. “You and Will can make this your home. And your sister can take the apartment over the garage.”
Sara saw the hammer make its final blow. Her mother wasn’t merely trying to control Sara’s life. She wanted to throw in Tessa for good measure.
Sara said, “I don’t think Tess wants to live over another garage.”
Bella asked, “Isn’t she living in a mud hut now?”
“Sissy, hush.” Cathy asked Sara, “Have you talked to Tessa about moving home?”
“Not really,” Sara lied. Her baby sister’s marriage was falling apart. She Skyped with her at least twice a day, even though Tessa was living in South Africa. “Mama, you have to let this go. This isn’t the 1950s. I can pay my own bills. My retirement is taken care of. I don’t need to be legally bound to a man. I can take care of myself.”
Cathy’s expression lowered the temperature in the room. “If that’s what you think marriage is, then I have nothing else to say on the matter.” She pushed herself up from the table and returned to the stove. “Tell Will to wash up for dinner.”
Sara closed her eyes so that she wouldn’t roll them.
She stood up and left the kitchen.
Her footsteps echoed through the cavernous living room as she skirted the periphery of the ancient Oriental rug. She stopped at the first set of French doors. She pressed her forehead against the glass. Will was happily pushing the lawn mower into the shed. The yard looked spectacular. He had even trimmed the boxwoods into neat rectangles. The edging showed a surgical precision.
What would he say to a 2.5 million-dollar fixer-upper?
Sara wasn’t even sure she wanted such a huge responsibility. She had spent the first few years of her marriage remodeling her tiny craftsman bungalow with Jeffrey. Sara keenly recalled the physical exhaustion from stripping wallpaper and painting stair spindles, and the excruciating agony of knowing that she could just write a check and let someone else do it, but her husband was a stubborn, stubborn man.
Her husband.
That was the third rail her mother had been reaching for in the kitchen: Did Sara love Will the same way she had loved Jeffrey, and if she did, why wasn’t she marrying him, and if she didn’t, why was she wasting her time?
All good questions, but Sara found herself caught in a Scarlett O’Hara loop of promising herself that she would think about it tomorrow.
She shouldered open the door and was met by a wall of heat. Thick humidity made the air feel like it was sweating. Still, she reached up and took the band out of her hair. The added layer on the back of her neck was like a heated oven mitt. Except for the smell of fresh grass, she might as well be walking into a steam room. She trudged up the hill. Her sneakers slipped on some loose rocks. Bugs swarmed around her face. She swatted at them as she walked toward what Bella called the shed but was actually a converted barn with a bluestone floor and space for two horses and a carriage.
The door was open. Will stood in the middle of the room. His palms were pressed to the top of the workbench as he stared out the window. There was a stillness to him that made Sara wonder if she should interrupt. Something had been bothering him for the last two months. She could feel it edging into almost every part of their lives. She had asked him about it. She had given him space to think about it. She had tried to fuck it out of him. He kept insisting that he was fine, but then she’d catch him doing what he was doing now: staring out a window with a pained expression on his face.
Sara cleared her throat.
Will turned around. He’d changed shirts, but the heat had already plastered the material to his chest. Pieces of grass were stuck to his muscular legs. He was long and lean and the smile that he gave Sara momentarily made her forget every single problem she had with him.
He asked, “Is it time for lunch?”
She looked at her watch. “It’s one forty-six. We have exactly fourteen minutes of calm before the storm.”
His smile turned into a grin. “Have you seen the shed? I mean, really seen it?”
Sara thought it was pretty much a shed, but Will was clearly excited.
He pointed to a partitioned area in the corner. “There’s a urinal over there. An actual, working urinal. How cool is that?”
“Awesome,” she muttered in a non-awesome way.
“Look how sturdy these beams are.” Will was six-four, tall enough to grab the beam and do a few pull-ups. “And look over here. This TV is old, but it still works. And there’s a full refrigerator and microwave over here where I guess the horses used to live.”
She felt her lips curve into a smile. He was such a city boy he didn’t know that it was called a stall.
“And the couch is kind of musty, but it’s really comfortable.” He bounced onto the torn leather couch, pulling her down beside him. “It’s great in here, right?”
Sara coughed at the swirling dust. She tried not to connect the stack of her uncle’s old Playboys to the creaking couch.
Will asked, “Can we move in? I’m only halfway kidding.”
Sara bit her lip. She didn’t want him to be kidding. She wanted him to tell her what he wanted.
“Look, a guitar.” He picked up the instrument and adjusted the tension on the strings. A few strums later and he was making recognizable sounds. And then he turned it into a song.
Sara felt the quick thrill of surprise that always came with finding out something new about him.
Will hummed the opening lines of Bruce Springsteen’s “I’m on Fire”.
He stopped playing. “That’s kind of gross, right? ‘Hey little girl is your daddy home?’”
“How about ‘Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon’? Or ‘Don’t Stand So Close to Me’? Or the opening line to ‘Sara Smile’?”
“Damn.” He plucked at the guitar strings. “Hall and Oates, too?”
“Panic! At the Disco has a better version.” Sara watched his long fingers work the strings. She loved his hands. “When did you learn to play?”
“High school. Self-taught.”