My impulse was to duck out of view, but I rolled down the window. <\/p>\n
\u201cLaura?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOh my!\u201d The familiar laugh rippled out or her. \u201cLet me have a look at you!\u201d<\/p>\n
I stepped out of the car and she grabbed me. From her arms, her chest, her stomach pressed against me, came even more warmth than I remembered. \u201cMmm!\u201d She let go and scanned my body. \u201cLook at you. You\u2019re a woman now. I guess you were the last time I saw you, but that was such a short visit, I still think of you as a teenager. And now you have kids, too?\u201d They were barely visible, staring through the minivan\u2019s tinted windows. \u201cCan I see them?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSure.\u201d I slid open the side door and introduced Dante and Chloe.
\n\u201cGreat names,\u201d Laura said. \u201cAnd you know they both look like you. Especially around the nose.\u201d She addressed the kids: \u201cGabriel and Megan say they\u2019ve been having a lot of fun with you two.\u201d She turned back to me. \u201cBut you\u2019re not feeling well?\u201d<\/p>\n
As soon as she asked me I remembered from the old days that it\u2019s impossible to be frightened of Laura. I\u2019m sure the sense you get \u2014 that she\u2019ll like you no matter what \u2014 is one reason Dad risked so much to be with her. \u201cActually, I\u2019m better now,\u201d I said. \u201cI was just a little carsick is all.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThen you can come in! That\u2019s great, I want to hear about everything.\u201d<\/p>\n
I hesitated a second longer, then gave in. Walking to the house, she took my arm as we were old chums. My free hand held Chloe\u2019s. And Dante held Chloe\u2019s other hand, so we went down the walkway four abreast.<\/p>\n
As soon as we stepped into the foyer, Gabriel peered from around a corner and shot us all with a toy pistol. I flinched and Chloe let go of Dante\u2019s hand to put her finger in her mouth. Grinning, Gabriel stepped out and handed another gun to Dante. Dante reached for it, then looked at me. Toy guns are strictly forbidden in our household, but this didn\u2019t seem the moment to stand on principle, so I nodded. Dante seized the weapon. \u201cWant to see something really cool?\u201d Gabriel asked him. The two ran off into the depths of the house, shooting as they went.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re going to the playroom,\u201d Laura said. \u201cShall we show Chloe?\u201d
\nWe followed her down a pushily carpeted hall, past dark oil portraits in heavy gilt frames, a billiard room. One windowed alcove was furnished with a pedestal and vase of irises. I knew that Laura had married a successful businessman, but it still felt incongruous to find her living this way. The playroom was dominated by a big screen TV, its floor strewn with toys from a built-in cabinet. Gabriel and Dante, armed with joy sticks, were making ninjas jump and slash messily on the screen. Megan was tooting on a penny whistle held in one hand and thumping on a drum with the other. When she spotted Chloe, she picked up a toy guitar and handed it to her.<\/p>\n
Back in the living room we found Ivor and Andy ensconced on a white sofa, iced tea set before them on a glass coffee table. Facing them, in an armchair sat a man dressed like Laura in white tennis togs. Marco\u2019s skin was of the same weathered brown as hers, but it hung like loose leather over his country-club muscles. He was still wearing his green sun visor on a hairless head.<\/p>\n
After she introduced us, Laura took our drink orders, and when she came back from the kitchen she also brought a plate of real foie gras and brie with crackers. The only seat around the circle was next to Ivor on the couch, but before Laura could take it, Marco reached for her. \u201cCome here, good looking.\u201d He pulled her onto his lap.<\/p>\n
And so we began catching up. But, as so often with my own parents, we avoided mention of the group marriage. Instead we spoke as if we\u2019d simply been neighbors, our acquaintance only interrupted by my move to New York, or Laura\u2019s to Danville. If ever we strayed too far into the past, it was Marco who brought us back to something innocuous. \u201cAnd
\nyour mother?\u201d Laura asked once.<\/p>\n
\u201cDoing well,\u201d I said. \u201cIn fact she\u2019s in Sierra Leone right now.\u201d
\n\u201cSierra Leone! Isn\u2019t that dangerous?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI actually think she likes to take risks, under certain controlled circumstances.\u201d<\/p>\n
Laura laughed.<\/p>\n
\u201cWasn\u2019t your mom the one who put an end to the whole thing?\u201d Andy said.<\/p>\n
We all paused for a beat, then Marco said, \u201cI\u2019d never go to Africa. China, yes. Russia. No place in Africa. What is she doing there?\u201d
\n\u201cCollecting art, isn\u2019t that right?\u201d said Laura. By now she had slipped
\noff Marco\u2019s lap onto the carpet by his chair.<\/p>\n
Marco reached down to run his hands through her hair. \u201cHere\u2019s all the art I need to collect.\u201d<\/p>\n
Invisible to him, Laura rolled her eyes. I wondered then what bargain she\u2019d made with herself, to marry this man ten years her senior and so unlike her previous husbands. But a moment later, Marco made a joke, and in the way Laura laughed, looking up at him with one hand on his knee, she seemed genuinely fond.<\/p>\n
The thought made me wonder for a moment what compromises I had made in my own marriage, maybe without admitting them to myself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My impulse was to duck out of view, but I rolled down the window. \u201cLaura?\u201d \u201cOh my!\u201d The familiar laugh rippled out or her. \u201cLet me have a look at you!\u201d I stepped out of the car and she grabbed me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[89,70,91,53,10],"class_list":["post-951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adrienne","tag-fiction","tag-interactive-fiction","tag-laura-wrightson","tag-poly","tag-polyamory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=951"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/951\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1045,"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/951\/revisions\/1045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lairdharrison.com\/fallenlake\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}