The Threefold Tie by Aster Glenn Gray

Author:Aster Glenn Gray [Gray, Aster Glenn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Romance
Goodreads: 52921168
Published: 2020-04-03T00:00:00+00:00

5.

“What about you?” Sophie asked.

They were in bed now, lying on top of the sheets in the moonlight. Everett yawned and stretched and rolled over to twine a loose strand of her hair around his fingers. “I’ll have you the other fifty-one weeks of the year,” he said. “That seems a fair enough division, doesn’t it?”

“Well, yes, but I meant – while Jack is here. How do you envision this working? Would Jack and I just go off in another room and…” Sophie could not quite bring herself to finish that sentence. “Do you want to… watch?”

Sophie said the word watch with some hesitation, and either Everett heard that hesitation or shared it himself, because he said, “No, not watch.”

“It was just that you talked about imagining…”

“Yes, but in imagination one looks on – oh, almost like the sun, casting benevolent rays on the scene. In real life I would be a great hulking presence and…” He made a face. “I don’t know that you would like to have an audience.” A glance at her; she grimaced. “And I’m sure it would paralyze Jack,” he added.

“Very likely.” Sophie tapped his nose gently. “So you don’t want to watch, then. Would you want to… participate?”

Everett pressed his face against the pillow. Sophie added, “And don’t try to come over that you’ve lost all interest in Jack. I’m not blind: I could see clearly enough what you wanted this morning.”

Everett raised his head. “Then you saw that he’s not interested in me.”

She was not at all certain of that. It had all been so sudden and startling that it was hard to remember it clearly, or at least in any level of detail. But she did remember that Jack’s objection had not been I don’t want to.

“Everett. How long were you and Jack…” She paused, searching for a word. Courting clearly did not quite fit. “I always assumed,” she explained, “for no particular reason, you certainly never said – that your… dalliance ended years ago, during the war.”

She spoke tentatively. Marital vows, after all, ought to throw a veil over everything that had come before, and she was not sure that it was right to pry into Everett’s life before their marriage. But Everett answered without protest. “It ended a few months before our wedding,” he said.

His eyes lifted to meet hers. He said quietly, “I botched it terribly, Sophie, when I told him I was getting married. I don’t suppose there was really a good way to do it, but I did it just about the worst way possible. If he ever loved me – I don’t think he ever did – but he doesn’t now, I’m sure.”

She remembered Everett’s comment on the train platform last October. It will be good for him to fall in love, he said, quite certain Jack had never been in love before.

And she remembered Jack’s comment that morning as he packed his carpetbag. “You know,” Sophie told Everett, “today Jack said much the same thing about you.

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