Charlaine Harris - The Julius House

I shifted my face around to “Expectant.”

“The garage apartment,” he said.

I raised my eyebrows even higher.

“I have a friend who just came into town from Florida. He lost his job. He and his wife are very capable people. I wondered-if you didn’t mind-if they could have the garage apartment.”

“Of course,” I said. I’d never met a friend of Martin’s, an old friend. He had made a few connections locally, mostly at the Athletic Club, upper-management men like himself. “You knew him from-?”

“Vietnam,” he said.

“So what’s his name?”

“Shelby. Shelby Youngblood. I thought… with all the renovation… it might be nice to have someone else on the spot out at the house. Shelby will probably work out at Pan-Am Agra in shipping and receiving, but Angel, his wife, could be there when he’s not.”

“Okay,” I said, feeling I’d missed something important.

“When I found out Barrett couldn’t come,” Martin said, almost as an afterthought, “I called your stepfather, and he’s agreed to be my best man.”

I smiled with genuine pleasure. In many ways, it was easier to marry an older man who was used to fending for himself. “That was a good idea,” I said, knowing John must have been pleased to be asked.

We parted in the parking lot. He took off back to work, and I was going to my favorite paint/carpet/wallpaper store, Total House, to start the Julius place on its road to becoming our house. But halfway there, I pulled over to the curb and sat staring ahead, my window open for the cool fresh air.

Martin, in his “mysterious” mode, had put one over on me.

Who the hell was this Shelby Youngblood? What kind of woman was his wife? What sort of job in Florida had he lost, and how did he know where to find Martin? I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel, wondering.

Probably this was the downside of marrying an older man who was used to fending for himself. He also was not used to having to explain himself. And yet Martin deserved to keep his past life a secret, I thought confusedly; I was hardly telling him all… No! I had told him everything that might make a difference to our life together. I wasn’t wanting to know the names of his sexual partners in the past years, which of course he should keep to himself. But I had a right, didn’t I, a right to know-what? What was really frightening me?

But we hadn’t known each other that long, I told myself. We had plenty of time for Martin to tell me whatever heavy and grim passages from his past he wanted me to know.

I was going to marry Martin. I started my car and pulled back into the modest stream of traffic that was Lawrence-ton’s lunch-hour rush.

Because really, trickled on a tiny cold relentless voice in the very back of my mind, really, if you asked him and he told you, you might learn something that would force you to cancel the wedding.

The prospect of being without him was so appalling, I just couldn’t risk it.

At the second stoplight, I swept this all neatly under my mental carpet as prewedding jitters and took a right turn to Total House.

There I made a few salesmen very, very happy.

I met Martin at the Episcopal church, St. James, that night for our fourth premarital counseling session with Father Aubrey Scott. The two men were standing out in the churchyard talking when I arrived-Martin shorter, more muscular than Aubrey, more intense. It felt odd walking over to them under their scrutiny; Aubrey had been my escort for several months and we had been rather fond (though never more than that) of each other. If they were asked to describe me, I suddenly thought, they would describe totally different people. I stowed that thought away to chew at later.

Martin had met me when I was dating Aubrey, and consequently always felt extra possessive when Aubrey was around, I’d noticed. Now, he slid his arm around me as I joined them, while keeping their desultory conversation going.

“-the Julius house?” Aubrey was saying in some surprise.

I looked up, way up, at his mildly handsome face with its carefully groomed dark mustache.

“Her wedding present,” Martin said simply.

“Quite a gift,” Aubrey said. “But, Roe, won’t it bother you?”

“What?” I asked, deliberately obtuse.

“The missing family. I’ve been in Lawrenceton long enough to hear the story, several times. Though I’m sure it’s gotten embroidered over the years. Can there really have been hot food still on the table when the mother came over from the garage apartment?”

“I don’t know, I hadn’t heard that particular twist,” I said.

“And it won’t make you nervous?” Aubrey persisted.

“It’s a wonderful house,” I said. “It makes me happy just to walk in the door.”

“Emily would be too nervous to stay an hour.”

Aubrey always had to drag Emily Kaye into the conversation. I figured the sexual dynamics went something like this: Aubrey and I had parted when Martin and Emily appeared on our horizons. Emily had the child Aubrey wanted and couldn’t have (he was sterile) and Martin had so much electricity for me I felt the air crackled when we were together. But Aubrey had dated me first, and perhaps a little resented my recovering from his gentle “good-bye” speech so thoroughly and quickly. So Emily Kaye, his all-but-in-name fiancйe, was sure to be mentioned whenever I saw him.

It’s stuff like that that made me so glad to be almost married. After so many years of dating and not-dating, I was heartily sick of all these little undercurrents and maneuverings. I was ready to be devastatingly straightforward. There is no telling what my reputation for eccentricity would have become if Martin hadn’t chanced to want to see a house my mother, the real estate queen of Lawrenceton, was too busy to show him. She’d sent me in her stead and we had met for the first time on the front steps.

The phone rang in Aubrey’s office, and he excused himself to answer it. I seized the opportunity to turn Martin’s face toward mine and give him a very thorough kiss. That was certainly one of the biggest differences in my relationship with Martin; the sex was frequent, uninhibited, and absolutely wonderful. My sexual experience was not extensive, though I’d had what I thought was good sex before, but I had found a whole new dimension to the subject with Martin Bartell.

He said, “If it’s the suit, I’ll wear it every day.”

“I was just thinking about the first time I saw you.”

“Can we go back and stand on the steps of that house again?”

“No, Mother sold it last week.”

“Well-” Martin bent to resume where we’d left off, but Aubrey came out of his office then. The churchyard was getting dark, and he called to us to come in. We went in hand and hand, and while we talked in his office, the darkness outside became complete.

“I had supper tonight with Shelby Youngblood,” Martin said. He was leaning against his car, I against mine, side by side in the church parking lot. The security lights overhead made his face colorless and cast deep shadows under his eyes.

Martin was going to spend the night at his apartment since he was leaving early in the morning to catch a plane to the Pan-Am Agra plant in Arkansas.

“I should meet him,” I murmured.

“That’s what I wanted to set up. Can he come out to the new house tomorrow morning? That’s where you’ll be?”

I nodded. “Martin, what’s this man like?”

“Shelby? He’s… trustworthy.”

That wasn’t exactly what I’d expected to hear. A strange capsule biography.

“I guess I wanted a little more than that,” I said. “Does he drink, smoke, gamble? Where does he come from? What did he do before he came here?”