First Time: Penny's Story (First Time (Penny) Book 1) (37 page)

I gave him a sideways smile. “Have we?”

“
Sure, earlier this week,”
he said, with a wink that made Annie’s face turn stony.

“
Is it official, then? Have
you set a date?” Danny asked from his end of the table. “You need
six months for counseling, at the very least.”

“
She has to come over,
first,” Bill said with a nod to his son.

“
Come over?” The walls of
the conversation were closing in around me.

“
Convert,” Annie supplied.
“But they can’t get married in the church, anyway, because of the
divorce.”

“
No one is converting to
anything,” Ian snapped. “Leave her alone, for Christ’s sake. That’s
a long way off. Neither of us have asked, and nobody has said
yes.”

There was nothing untrue about that
statement. He hadn’t proposed. I hadn’t, either. No real
commitments had been made between us. It was all still painfully
hypothetical.

“
Besides,” Ian went on, his
anger subdued. “We wouldn’t even think about a wedding until I came
back from Nassau.”

Well. I guess that gave me the answer to
question I hadn’t even realized I wanted to ask. It wasn’t that I
expected Ian to set a date after three months, and dating for two
years before getting married wasn’t unusual. It was just that Ian
had talked about it as though he were eager to get the whole
marriage-and-family thing kicked off as soon as possible. Was he
just downplaying it for his sister?

I valiantly made small talk for the rest of
the meal. I learned that Bill had worked at a plant that made parts
for cars and that Annie had been a homemaker, but now that Danny
was grown, she worked part time at the church office. Danny had
gone to Notre Dame on a scholarship and chose to pursue seminary
after that.

I also heard some fascinating Ian stories,
like his infamous Flock of Seagulls haircut he’d sported in college
and his childhood penchant for peeing out of windows. By the end of
the dinner, some of my panic had eased, and that was due in large
part to Ian himself, and how he behaved toward me. His eyes barely
left me throughout the entire meal. He flushed bright red from some
of the anecdotes his sister shared, and he hooked his ankle around
mine under the table.

Sure, I’d gotten emotional whiplash, but all
of that aside, it seemed like it had been a pretty successful
dinner.

“
Well, I’ll get to these
dishes,” Bill said, pushing back from the table.

“
Nah, Dad, I’ve got them,”
Danny volunteered.

Bill waved a hand at him. “You don’t get many
days off. Go take a nap while you can. I’ve got the whole
weekend.”

“
I can help,” I offered,
pushing my own chair back.

“
And Ian and I can take out
the garbage,” Annie said. “Starting with that carcass.”

The kitchen was a flurry of activity as Annie
and Bill got out Tupperware, and Ian and I packaged up the
leftovers. Plates were scraped and the “carcass” of the once
movie-perfect turkey slid into its own bag. Bill ran water while
Ian and Annie lugged the bags out the back door and down the
steps.

Bill showed me where the dishrags were,
though he wasn’t happy about my participation in the chores.
“You’re a guest. You shouldn’t have to do the washing up.”

“
The washing up,” I said
with a giggle. “That’s so cute.”

“
You pick up those things
from them,” he said with a grin. “You’ll see.”

I smiled right back, but out of the corner of
my eye I caught sight of white plastic. “They missed one.”

“
They’ll be in, soon,” Bill
said placidly.

“
I’ll grab it.” I wasn’t
trying to get out of doing dishes, but escaping the heat of the
tiny kitchen for a second would be nice.

“
Don’t you need your coat?”
Bill asked, but I was already headed to the door, trash bag in
tow.

“
The cold will be good for
me,” I said cheerfully. Then I backed out of the door into a cloud
of what could only be cigarette smell.

“
Ian?” I frowned and waved
at the blue curls wafting through the air from where he and his
sister stood. “You smoke?”

“
No,” he said guiltily,
hiding the cigarette behind his back.

“
Then is your coat on fire?”
Was it weird to be mad at him over this? He was an adult, after
all. But it seemed like it might have come up at one point or
another, if he wasn’t actively hiding it.

“
He quit a long time ago.”
Annie reached behind him and snagged the cigarette, and he cursed
and brought his knuckles to his mouth. “I’m a bad influence on
him.”

“
You burned my fucking hand,
is what you did.” Ian pressed the backs of his fingers to the metal
stair railing. “Sorry, Penny. I swear, this isn’t a regular
occurrence.”

“
No, don’t worry. It’s, um.”
I shook my head. “No, don’t worry about it.”

“
Don’t tell on me, would
you?” Annie asked, motioning to the house. “I think I do a good job
of hiding it.”

“
It must run in the family.”
I jerked my thumb over my shoulder. “I’m going to go back
in.”

“
I’ll be along in a minute.”
Ian scuffed the soles of his shoes on the pavement. “I’ll need ice
for my hand.”

I hoped he didn’t think I’d be getting that
ice. He’d burned his hand being all deceptive and smoky. That was
his injury to deal with. Then, I remembered, “Well, I have to put
this trash away first, actually.”

“
No, let me,” he said,
stepping up to take the handles of the bag from my hand. “Consider
it my penance.”

I went back inside and hoped Bill wouldn’t
smell the smoke on me. “Okay, trash is taken care of.”

“
Ian and Annie out there
having a cigarette?” Bill asked, wiping a glass dry.

I froze. “You know about that?”

“
Oh, yeah. They think
they’re real sneaky. Annie hides her smokes in the ceramic frog at
the bottom of the steps.” He shrugged. “It gives them some private
time.”

“
They seem really close,” I
observed, slowly invading Bill’s personal space until he moved over
and let me help by washing the dishes.

“
Well, after what happened—
Ian did tell you what happened, didn’t he?” Bill asked.

I lowered my voice. “With Robbie and Cathy?
Yeah.”

“
All the kids were real
close after that. Not so much now that they’re all split up all
over the place. But get them together, and it’s like they see each
other every day, you know?” Bill spoke of the family with such
affection, it made me long to be a part of it. “But being the only
two over here, Annie and Ian are kind of the only family they’ve
got.”

They definitely behaved the way I assumed
siblings would.

“
Look,” Bill said suddenly.
“This isn’t my place. But don’t let Annie scare you off. She’s just
being protective, after the way things ended with Gena.”

Considering how helpless Ian felt over what
had happened to their siblings, I couldn’t blame her for wanting to
keep the rest of them safe from every kind of hurt possible. “I
know. And I promise, I’m not out to hurt Ian. That’s the last thing
I would want to do.”

“
She’s not worried about you
hurting Ian. She’s worried about him hurting you. Because of the
cheating.”

The puke feeling from earlier returned with
such a vengeance that I clenched my back teeth before I could speak
again. “Right. Because he cheated on Gena,” I bluffed, hoping I was
wrong.

Bill nodded as he rinsed the suds off the
plate I handed him with numb fingers. “Annie’s worried because she
thinks once someone cheats, they’re going to do it again, no matter
what. But that’s not always the case. Ian and Gena had real
problems.”

Ian and Penny had some real
problems, too. He’d cheated on his wife? And he hadn’t told me?
Worse, he’d
lied
to
me about it. “Yeah, the thing about how she didn’t want to have
kids.”

Bill frowned. “Gena wanted kids. They went to
a fertility specialist and everything.”

The air in the room became very thin. The
blood drained from my face and my extremities, racing toward my
suddenly pounding heart.

“
Oh, gosh.” Bill’s face was
ashen. “I said too much.”

“
No, it’s fine. It’s fine.”
I flinched at the sound of the back door opening.

“
Bill, you look like you’re
going to pass out,” Ian said with a laugh. “What did you do to
him?”

I would not cry. I absolutely forbid myself
from crying. I turned to Ian. “We were just talking about you and
Gena.”

Ian’s eyes went wide. “No, no, no.” He looked
to Bill and Annie before his eyes flicked back to me. “Penny, it’s
not what it probably sounded like.”

“
I don’t think this is the
proper place to discuss this,” I said, and I could have sworn it
was my mother’s voice coming out of my mouth. “Let’s go talk about
it in the car while you drive me home.” I gave Annie and Bill truly
grateful glances. If they hadn’t welcomed me into their home, I
wouldn’t have found any of this out until it was too
late.

I really owed them one.

“
Thanks for inviting me
today. It really was a lovely meal. I definitely got to know
someone better.” My voice cracked, and I turned for the
door.

In the living room, Danny lay on the couch,
watching an episode of some car show on the television. He sat up
when I grabbed my coat off the rack by the door.

“
You’re going?” he asked,
and though I felt terrible for not responding, I couldn’t trust
myself to speak.

I ran out to the car then stood stupidly on
the sidewalk, because I didn’t have the keys.

Ian was just a few moments behind me, pulling
his coat on with an agitated curse.

This isn’t the place for
this. This isn’t the place for this
, I
reminded myself. But I couldn’t hold back. “Thank you for bringing
me here. I got a much clearer picture of who you are.”

“
Penny, there is a perfectly
reasonable explanation for this,” he tried to assure me.

“
You’ve been saying that a
lot, lately.”
But he did have a perfectly
good reason last time
. At least, he’d said
he had. His dinner with Carrie Glynn only seemed innocent without
the knowledge that he was a liar and a cheat. Now that I
knew…

“
And you’ve been assuming
the worst of me a lot, lately,” he argued. “Get in the car. I don’t
want to have this fight on the sidewalk in front of my sister’s
house.”

“
Don’t tell me what to do!”
I shouted. I was so angry I didn’t care who overheard us. “And
don’t try to be fucking reasonable about this. You cheated on your
ex-wife!”

“
I didn’t cheat on Gena!” He
started off shouting but quickly lowered his voice to that
maddening calm tone again. “I told Annie that I cheated on Gena so
she wouldn’t know the real reason we got divorced.”

“
On what planet is that
supposed to make sense to me, Ian? ‘I didn’t want my sister to know
that my marriage broke up because of this totally not horrible
reason, so I told her I was a complete asshole instead?’” Did he
think I was an idiot?

“
I know it sounds
implausible—”

“
Implausible?” I laughed,
because it was that fucking ridiculous. “Ian, why should I trust
you?”

“
When have I lied to you
before?” he demanded.

“
You told me that Gena
didn’t want to have children. Bill says that the two of you saw a
fertility doctor.” I folded my arms over my chest, because it was
cold and because I felt like I might need to hold my heart it. “You
apparently smoke, that’s out of left field—”

“
I smoke an occasional
cigarette, that doesn’t make me a murderer!”

“
But it does mean that there
are some fairly simple things about you that you haven’t bothered
to share with me. Do you think if you just don’t tell me things,
they don’t count?” My throat stuck shut. I pressed my fingers to
the sudden throbbing in my temple. “How do you really know Carrie
Glynn?”

Please, tell me I’m being paranoid. Tell me
I’m too suspicious. Tell me something I can believe, so I can still
love you.

A muscle in his jaw shifted. “We used to work
together. And we slept together a few times.”

I gulped in air, the last desperate gasp as I
sank into the reality of what this conversation really was.

We were breaking up.

“
I would have told
you—”

“
And you and Gena. Did you
try to have a baby?”

He looked away. That stupid look away that
made it so he didn’t have to commit to confronting reality. “We did
see a fertility doctor. And we did try to have a baby, for over a
year.”

I squeezed my eyes shut. My tears went from
hot to shockingly cold on my cheeks.

“
Penny, I promise you, all
of this… It seems indefensible. I know that it must look like I’m
this…pathological liar, but I’m not.”

Was there an explanation? Or would it just be
more lies? “No. You cheated on your ex-wife, and you lied to me
about it. You know what I just went through—”

“
Oh, for fuck’s sake, I am
not Brad!” Ian shouted, finally losing his cool. “You were hurt,
and I understand that, but I’m not going to be punished for
something someone else did to you. If you need to work out your
feelings about your last relationship, feel free to end this
one!”