The Marriage Intervention Read Online Free Page B

reason for visiting Susie’s forgotten.  
    The following Thursday, Delaney came up from vet school for a weekend visit. The three girls went to Rowdy’s for Happy Hour, and Josie confessed: “I’m not usually one to go for men in uniform, but wowza! I mean, he was hot.”  
    “So did you get his number?” Summer asked.  
    “I’m working on it. You know, police officers’ phone numbers are top secret or some shit. Classified.”  
    “Delaney,” Summer said. “Look at the way she’s grinning right now. When’s the last time you saw Josie grin like that? I sense something special about this one.”  
    Delaney nodded sagely. “Yes,” she said. “I haven’t seen her smile like that since freshman year of high school when Davey Richmond taught her what second base is.”  
    “I’m scandalized,” Josie said, but deep down, she knew it was true. She didn’t often let guys get to her. Well, not usually.
    Scott had gotten to her. And look what had happened there.  
    “Whoa, that was weird,” Summer said. “The grin disappeared. What’s up with that?”  
    “Oh, nothing,” Josie said brightly. “Just need a refill, that’s all.”  
    The conversation moved on then, to Delaney’s final exams at vet school and how Summer’s daughter Sarah had started preschool. Even as they laughed at Sarah’s insistence on wearing all purple - socks, pants, shirts, a sweater, and boots, Josie felt a tiny bit … nostalgic, maybe? Sad? She couldn’t quite put her finger on it.  
    And worse, she couldn’t hash it out with the girls. Because she’d been in the middle of grieving for her mother, Josie hadn’t mentioned Scott when they first met. Then he’d sworn her to secrecy, so solemn she’d joked they should take a blood oath.
    “I can’t have anyone knowing we had a relationship,” he said to her one night as he stood in her doorway on the way out. “You understand. It just wouldn’t be … proper.”  
    Of course, Josie nodded. She understood. She planned to ascend the career ladder, too, and didn’t want scandal coloring her resume.  
    So instead of telling the girls about Scott, she told them she was going through the isolation phase of grief and needed time alone. In reality, she spent every spare moment with Scott. She told the girls she was getting ready for the school year. In reality, she and Scott were having steamy sex on her classroom floor.  
    It was easy to fool them. Summer was about to give birth to Nate and Delaney was finishing up school. The secret went completely undetected, and it stood sacred, even until present day.
     
    ***
    Josie’s relationship with Paul erased her feelings for Scott with the efficiency of a chalkboard eraser. The solid lines disappeared, but that fine white dust, made of memories and possibility, always remained.  
    The following summer, Josie married Paul in a wedding that blended romance and practicality. She carried a bouquet of orchids (romance) and wore her mother’s wedding gown (practicality). She and the girls transformed one of Juniper’s lakeside parks into a wonderland by draping twinkling lights in the trees and setting potted trees and flowers on almost every flat surface.  
    As the Comstock-Garcias—she chose to keep her mother’s last name—walked back down the aisle after the minister pronounced them husband and wife, Josie felt like she was flying, soaring with happiness. She looked into Paul’s eyes and thought nothing could ever take him away from her.  

    ***
    When the front door finally clicked open, Josie managed to open her eyes just wide enough to read the time on the clock. Twelve minutes after two in the morning. Although she and Paul both knew she only half-slept when he worked late, Paul tried to be quiet. She could picture him now, pulling his gun and holster out of his waistband and putting them in the safe in the coat closet. He would take off his shoes next, stepping on the heel of one with the toe of the other.