Christine Rimmer - The Marriage Agreement

He remembered he’d been running a lawnmower on Tory’s lawn the first time he ever laid eyes on her. She’d come out of the front door—fourteen, she must have been then, wearing shorts that showed off her pretty legs, that red hair pulled back with one of those scrunchy things. He’d almost run that mower right into the big oak in the corner of the lot.

That fall, he’d spotted her at school for the first time: a freshman. It had taken him until the following summer before he could drum up the nerve to ask her out.

Marsh drove very slowly—too slowly, probably. In this kind of neighborhood, where people kept their cars in their roomy garages and no one had the bad taste to hang out on the street, a lone man cruising a little too slowly could easily cause suspicion.

Again he felt slightly reprehensible, an intruder in the life of a woman he no longer really knew. Still, he didn’t speed up as he approached. He slowed even further, taking in all the details, noting small changes. Flowers grew close to the house now, instead of low juniper bushes in a bed of white river rock. And the big door with the beveled glass in the top of it, once white, had been painted a deep green.

A group of children—four girls dressed in jeans and bright-colored T-shirts—were passing Tory’s front walk just as Marsh turned her corner to drive by the front of the house. One of them, slim and dark-haired, wearing bright purple tennis shoes with thick white soles, waved at the others and started up the walk.

Marsh’s mouth went dry.

He slammed his foot on the brake, stopped the car, right there, in the middle of the street, not caring in the least that the other three girls had turned to stare at him. He had eyes only for the slim one in the purple tennis shoes—the one who strolled straight up the walk to the dark-green door and let herself inside.

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