The Marriage Conspiracy

She held the questions back. Sam might be only eighteen months old, but you could never be sure of how much he understood. And she didn’t want Niki stirred up, either. She gestured with a toss of her head. Niki got up and followed her down to the other end of the long porch.

“What do you mean about the Atwoods?” Joleen kept her voice low and her tone even.

Niki shrugged. “I don’t know. They sure stare a lot.”

“Have they…bothered you?”

“I don’t know, Joly. Like I said, they just stare.”

“They haven’t spoken to you at all?”

“Well, yeah. Twice. They tried to talk to Sam, but you know how he is sometimes. He got shy, buried his head against my shoulder. Both times they gave up and walked away.”

So. They had tried to get to know their grandson a little and gotten nowhere. Joleen found herself feeling sorry for them again.

“No real problems, though?”

“Uh-uh. Just general creepiness.”

Joleen reached out, brushed a palm along her sister’s arm. “You’ve been great, taking care of Sam all day.”

“Yeah. Call me Wonder Girl.” Niki was good with Sam. She took her baby-sitting duties seriously. In fact, Niki was doing a lot better lately all the way around. She’d given them a real scare last year. But Joleen had begun to believe those problems were behind her now.

“Want a little break?”

“Sure—Can I get out of this dress?”

Joleen hid a smile. Rose-colored satin was hardly her little sister’s style. Niki liked black. Black hip-riding skinny jeans, equally skinny little black T-shirts, black Doc Martens. Sometimes, for variety, she’d wear navy blue or deep purple, but never anything bright. Certainly nothing rosy red.

“Go ahead and change,” said Joleen.

Niki beamed. “Thanks.”

They rejoined Sam at the other end of the porch. “Hey, big guy,” Joleen said. “I need some help.”

Sam loved to “help.” He considered “helping” to be anything that involved a lot of busyness on his part. Pulling his mother around by her thumb could be “helping,” or carrying items from one place to another.

Sam set down the red plastic block in his fist and leaned forward, going to his hands and knees. “I hep.” He rocked back to the balls of his feet and pushed himself to an upright position.

Joleen held out her arms.

He said something she couldn’t really make out, but she knew he meant he wanted to walk.

So she took his hand and walked him down the front steps and around to the backyard. When she spotted the Atwoods alone at a table on the far side of the patio, she led him over there.

Okay, they were snobs. And they made her a little nervous.

But it had to be awkward for them at this party. They didn’t really know a soul. Joleen had introduced them to her mother and a few of the guests when they first arrived. But they’d been on their own since then.

All right, maybe Robert Atwood had given her cold looks. Maybe he didn’t approve of her. So what?

She was going to get along with them if she could possibly manage it. They were Sammy’s grandparents and she would show them respect, give them a little of the slack they didn’t appear to be giving her.

And besides, who was to say she hadn’t read them all wrong? Maybe staring and glaring was just Robert Atwood’s way of coping with feeling like an outsider.

When she reached their table, Joleen scooped Sam up into her arms. “Well, how are you two holdin’ up?”

“We are fine,” said Robert.

“Yes,” Antonia agreed in that wispy little voice of hers, staring at Sam with misty eyes. “Just fine. Very nice.”

Joleen felt a tug of sympathy for the woman. A few weeks ago, when the Atwoods had finally agreed to come to her house and meet Sam, Antonia had shown her one of Bobby’s baby pictures. The resemblance to Sam was extraordinary.

What must it be like, to see their lost child every time they looked at Sam?

All the tender goodwill Joleen had felt toward them when she saw the newspaper photos of them at Bobby’s funeral came flooding back, filling her with new determination to do all in her power to see that they came to know their only grandson, that they found their rightful place in his life.

“Mind if Sam and I sit down a minute?”

“Please,” said Antonia, heartbreakingly eager, grabbing the chair on her right side and pulling it out.

Joleen put Sam in it. He sat back and laid his baby hands on the molded plastic arms. “I sit,” he declared with great pride.

Antonia made a small, adoring sound low in her throat.

Joleen took the other free chair at the table. As she scooped her satin skirt smooth beneath her, Robert Atwood spoke again.

“Ahem. Joleen. We really must be leaving soon.”

Protestations would have felt a little too phony, so Joleen replied, “Well, I am pleased that you could come and I hope you had a good time.”

Robert nodded, his face a cool mask. Antonia seemed too absorbed in watching Sam to make conversation.

Robert said, “I would like a few words with you, before we leave. In private.”

That got Antonia’s attention. A look of alarm crossed her delicate face. She actually stopped staring at Sam. “Robert, I don’t think it’s really the time to—”

“I do,” her husband interrupted, his voice flat. Final.

Antonia blinked. And said nothing more.

Joleen felt suspicious all over again—not to mention apprehensive. What was the man up to? She honestly wanted to meet these two halfway. But they—Robert, especially—made that so difficult.

She tried to keep her voice light. “Well, if you need to talk to me about something important, today is not the day, I’m afraid. I think I told you, this party is my doing. I’m the one who has to keep things moving along. There’s still the cake to cut. And the toasts to be made. Then there will be—”

“I think you could spare us a few minutes, don’t you? In the next hour or so?”

“No, I don’t think that I—”