I sighed. “I want to say it. You have no idea how much. But I’m not.”
“Then I agree to those ground rules.”
“Right.”
She said, “So put ‘Other people’ down on the list,” and I did it. I didn’t want to, but I did.
“Money first, then,” I said. “What about money?”
“You have a lot more than I do.”
“Yeh. I noticed.”
“And you could think that gives you all the power.”
“No worries,” I muttered. “I already got that.”
“Good,” she said. “So how does the money thing work?”
I blanked. “Dunno. How do you want it to work?”
She stood up, and this time, I didn’t pull her down. There was a reason this had been the first thing out of her mouth.
She paced to the window, stood looking out at the sea, and didn’t answer. Finally, I said, “Money is power. There’s no use denying it. That’s why I’ve worked so hard to get it.”
“And it’s yours,” she said without turning. “I know that. Obviously.”
“No,” I found myself saying. “It should be ours. It has to be ours. I don’t want you doing everything I’ve had to do to get it, or working as many hours as I have. I want you with me when I’m home. I want your company, and I want to know you don’t have to be exhausted and worried anymore. I want to know that I’m taking that burden off you, and I want you to know it, too, and to trust it. I want…” Children, I didn’t say, because we didn’t need any more complication today. Time enough for that later. This negotiation hadn’t been my idea, and if that wasn’t playing fair? Too bloody bad. “How about,” I said instead, “if we set up a joint account with our paychecks, took our expenses out of it—which includes Karen’s—and sat down every month to go through it together? And I set aside that college fund for Karen straight away, too, so you don’t have to think about that anymore?”
She turned from where she’d been staring out at the blowing curtains of rain to stare at me instead. “How could you agree to that? To the checking account, I mean. That’s ridiculously unfair to you.”
“I have investments.” That was one way of describing it. “This would be low risk for me even if you spent it all, which I know you wouldn’t.”
I tensed, waiting for her to ask me how much I had, not sure whether I was willing to reveal that, but she didn’t ask. Instead, she said, “I’m not going to ask you about those, because they aren’t my business,” which more or less took my breath away. “Anyway,” she went on, “what you bring to the marriage is yours, right? Isn’t that how it works?”
“In a divorce,” I said, and her head snapped back at the word. “That’s what you’re talking about, because that’s the only time it matters. Divorce, and inheritance. I’ll be changing my will and showing it to you, and I’ll have my attorney draw one up for you, too, so you can make sure Karen’s safe. I’m thirty-seven years old, but I plan to live at least fifty more years, and to be celebrating our golden anniversary with you. If I don’t make it that far, though, it’ll be yours. And before you ask? I’ll take care of Karen as well. Always. You have my word.”
“Oh. Wow.” She sat again, at the edge of the couch this time, and tucked her hands under her knees. “Death. That one’s…hard to think about.”
That was what she’d focused on. But then, she would. I had all sorts of family. Too much family, in fact. She only had Karen. And me.
Me, definitely, because what she said next was, “What you said about negotiation—all I want is to be with you forever, and to have you want to be with me that long, too. I need that so much it scares me. And you’re thirty-seven?”
“I am. Which is twelve years older than you. Still want to say yes?”
She laughed, though it sounded shaky. “I just…” She ran her hands through her fine hair, disheveling it some more. She was wearing black leggings, a dark-gray skirt, and a cropped pale-blue cardigan with a daisy picked out in darker blue beads in one corner. She looked young, and sweet, and vulnerable, and I wanted her more than I’d ever wanted anything in my life. “I said I’d marry somebody,” she said, “and I didn’t even know how old he was. You don’t know anything about me, either, so I’ll tell you a few things. I don’t know how to swim. I don’t know how to drive well enough to actually do it. I could learn, of course, but there you go—I don’t know how. I have a few thousand dollars in the bank and almost no credit, because I’ve never owned anything bigger than a couch, and my couch is nothing to write home about. I have a two-year college degree.” She looked at me, and she didn’t look young and innocent now. She looked steady, and strong. “Hemi. Are you sure?”
“Yeh,” I said. “I’m sure. Because you’re wrong, you know. I know everything about you. I know how much you’ve sacrificed for your sister, and what it took to do that. I know how hard you work, because I employ you. I know how honest you are, and how brave and stubborn and fierce you can be. I know everything that matters.”
She swallowed, and I saw it. I wanted to touch her, to hold her, but instead, I said, “So I’ll put down that checking account bit. I have a feeling that the hardest part is going to be to convince you to spend money.”
“I’m not used to it,” she admitted.
“Got that, didn’t I. Means I’ll have to keep buying you things instead, but I may be able to cope.” I typed a brief sentence into the document and said, “Is that it?”
“That’s the big one. And I get to decide what to do with my job,” she went on. “I don’t mean not do it well,” she added hastily when I looked up sharply. “Or that I get to decide not to have one. I mean that I can still leave the company if I want to.”
“I’m not writing that down,” I said. “Of course you’re entitled to quit. Legally, at least. But it’s not all right with me anyway. I’d be more than happy for you to quit entirely and take care of Karen and me—I won’t lie, I’d be rapt about that—but if you don’t, I want you there with me. I want to be able to have lunch with you when I can get away, and I don’t want you spending your nights working for somebody else.”
“You’re spending your nights working,” she pointed out.
“And one of us is enough. Just said that, didn’t I.”
She didn’t say anything, just stared at me, and I sighed and said, “Fine. You have the right to go somewhere else, and to take any job you want. But you’re going to talk to me about it first.”
“All right,” she said. “That’s fair. Write that down. And then tell me your things. Sex and my appearance. I’m getting my fighting words ready right now.”
“Now,” I said, “is that any attitude to take with your husband?’
The word came out of my mouth for the second time in twenty-four hours, and it sounded nothing but right, because Hope’s husband was exactly what I wanted to be. I liked the official sound of it—and, yes, the possessive sound of it, too. Hope was right about that.