Chapter 44

“You’re very domestic,” he said.

“When I have to be.”

“You and Charley are beginning to look like the real thing,” he said in what I now knew to be his serious mode.

“So it would seem. It hasn’t quite been a week since we met, but already I find it hard to contemplate not being with him.”

“Have you contemplated it?”

“Perhaps that was an unfortunate choice of words, more a figure of speech than a conscious thought. Let me start over. I’ve never been truly in love before, but I can certainly recognize it for what it is, and as far as I’m concerned, it’s forever, or until he gets tired of me.”

“Clearly, he feels the same way.”

“Have the two of you talked about it?”

“Not really, but I know Charley. He doesn’t do anything less than thoroughly. It’s all or nothing with that boy.”

“She said that too.”

“She who?”

“Lydia.”

“She’s one sharp gal.”

“I noticed.” I sensed that he was leading up to something with this line of questioning, and I turned out to be correct.