Best Kept Secret Read online

  “’Bye, Omi!” he chimes in. This is out of good breeding alone, I convince myself. Good breeding that I, as his mother, am personally responsible for.

  I buckle my own seat belt, start the car, and look at my son in the rearview mirror. “Ready, Spaghetti Freddie?” I ask.

  “Ready!” he squeals. He kicks his feet against the seat in front of him in emphasis.

  I pull away from the curb, wondering if the real question is, how ready am I?

  Two

  I wasn’t looking for a husband the night I met Martin, I was looking for a story. Two years after a summer internship morphed into a lifestyle section beat at the Seattle Herald, I was twenty-six and anxious to prove to my editor-in-chief that I was capable of writing more than fluff pieces on the newest trends in weight-loss programs or the yearly sand castle-building contest at Alki Beach. One of my sources—a woman I’d gotten to know during an article I did on a state workers’ successful holiday food drive—gave me the heads-up regarding a conflict between the pay increase percentage the governor had promised teachers and what the state could actually afford, so on a Friday night I showed up at a benefit dinner intended to raise money for creative arts in public schools. I figured I could chat up the teachers in attendance and see what kind of feature might evolve.

  As it turned out, after two unsuccessful hours of trying to track down an educator who was incensed enough with the governor to speak to me without the presence of their union rep, I stood alone by the appetizer buffet table with a glass of wine in hand, nibbling on a cracker spread with goat cheese and caramelized onion. Discouraged, I wondered not for the first time if I actually had the determined nature it took to be a successful journalist. I was weighing the option of making an early exit when a handsome man with bright blue eyes and short, spiked black hair suddenly appeared by my side.

  “Do you like sausages?” he inquired.

  I laughed out loud, hand over my mouth, trying not to spit out my last bite.

  He smiled at me, tilting his head in a disarmingly adorable manner. “A server sent me over to ask if you prefer sausage or chicken for dinner since he didn’t have your preference on the list. Why is that funny?”

  I touched the back of my hand to the side of my mouth, making sure I wasn’t covered in chewed-up appetizer before responding. I was suddenly conscious of my hair, happy I’d chosen to wear the flattering black dress that showed off the best thing about being an hourglass girl in a push-up bra.

  “It’s a rather presumptuous question, don’t you think?” I said.

  “Presumptuous, how? I didn’t ask if you like my sausage in particular.” His eyes flashed a wicked sparkle.

  I couldn’t help myself; I took a sip of my wine and looked up at him over the edge of the glass. “Sorry, I make it a strict policy not to reveal my meat-eating preferences to a man until at least the second date.”

  “Oh, really?” He raised his eyebrows in a way that convinced me he was definitely interested in learning more about my particular appetites. “And when do we go on our first?”

  “As soon as you call me.” I set my glass on the table, took out my business card from my purse, and handed it to him. My response to Martin was completely out of character—most of my relationships with men grew out of casual friendship, gradually evolving into something more intimate. My reaction to him was physical from the get-go, his pheromones unabashedly speaking to mine. We were seated at separate tables for dinner, but at the end of the night he offered to walk me to my car. The article was forgotten and I went to bed that night with a wide, stupid grin plastered across my face.

  We went out for dinner the following week at a cozy Italian cafe. After racing through the usual niceties about the weather and how our day was at work, we dove right into our family histories.

  “It was horrible,” Martin told me about his mother’s pregnancy with him. “I made her very, very sick. But she instructed me that I would be a strong, healthy boy.”

  “She ‘instructed’ you?” I said, twirling my hair in what I hoped was an appealing, playful manner. Being near him made my stomach feel as though it was full of a thousand fluttering butterflies.

  He nodded with mock gravity. “I learned in utero it was best to do what my mother expected. I mean, look at me!” He swept his hand from his chin down toward his waist. “Aren’t I a strong, healthy German boy?”

  I laughed and nodded. He wasn’t especially tall—five foot eight, maybe? Only a few inches taller than me. But he had the kind of arms I knew were strong enough to beat the begeezus out of any type of assailant. I was a sucker for a man with excellent arms.

  “You are absolutely strong and healthy,” I agreed. “But what about your father? Didn’t he have any say about how you turned out?”

  A brief shadow fell over his face. “He died when I was two. A construction site accident.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” I said. “Do you remember much about him?”

  He shook his head. “Not really. Nothing more than the feeling of him.” His mouth shifted into a wistful bend. “Does that make sense?”

  “Of course it does.” I gave him a tender smile and reached across the table to squeeze his thick fingers. They felt warm and sturdy. We fit. “Did your mother remarry?”

  He squeezed my hand in return and made no move to pull away. “No. It’s always been just the two of us.” He paused. “What about you?”

  “My family?”

  He nodded. “Brothers? Sisters? Pets? Crazy old aunts locked in the attic?”

  I laughed. “One younger sister, Jessica. And my mother. No pets. Or crazy aunts—that I know of.” My mind flashed briefly on the possibility of telling him about my grandmother, but I decided against it. Not good fodder for a first date.

  “And your father?”

  “I think I’d call him more of a sperm donor than a father.”

  Martin cringed. “Ouch.”

  I shrugged, pulling my hand back from his. “I was too young when he left for it to affect me very much.” I recited this line out of habit; my mother had said it to me often when I bemoaned the fact that I didn’t have a father like most of my friends.

  “How old were you?”

  “Not quite six months. My mom was about eight weeks pregnant with my sister.”

  “Nice guy.”

  “I don’t know. According to my mom, he just wasn’t cut out for the whole family gig, you know? He was an artist. Sort of the free-spirit, one-with-the-earth type. She was a registered voter and dental hygienist. An upstanding citizen.” Total opposites, I thought. Not like you and me. We already have more in common than the two of them ever did.

  “Still,” Martin said. “I just couldn’t imagine taking off like that. As a father. Or a husband.”

  I smiled. “They never actually got married. But that’s good to know about you.” Having witnessed the demise of her own parents’ disastrous union, my mother insisted she would never venture down the aisle. I was not quite so averse to the idea.

  “Is she still a hygienist? Your mom?”

  “A dentist, actually. After Jess was born, she worked about sixty hours a week at a couple of different offices to keep us afloat, then went back to school to get her degree. She’s had her own practice for over ten years now.”

  “Do you get along?”

  I picked up my fork, toying with the cold remains of my fettuccine. “For the most part. But Jess and I spent a lot of time with babysitters when we were growing up. And she’s so busy with her practice now I barely see her. I’m not sure how well I really know her.” It surprised me to feel the muscles in my throat tighten as I spoke that last sentence. I feigned a cough.

  Martin didn’t seem to notice the change in my voice. “Babysitters, huh? She didn’t have family around to help her out?”

  I shook my head. “Her parents divorced when she was twelve and her mom died not too long after that. She was pretty much on her own. It’s what she knows how to do.”

 
; He nodded. “Sounds like my mom, too. Both my parents’ families are back in Germany. I’ve never even met them.”

  “How did she support you after your dad passed away?” I paused, then added, “If you don’t mind me asking.”

  “It’s fine. She actually bought the bakery where she’d been working. My dad was a planner like that. He knew his job was risky, so he made sure to have good accidental death coverage.”

  “You had babysitters, too, then, I take it? With her owning a business?”

  “Sort of. I just went to the shop with her. A gaggle of German bakerwomen took care of me. Fed me bits of cake to keep me from crying.”

  “Hmm . . . a whole gaggle, huh?”

  He lifted one shoulder up and forward a bit. “What can I say? My mother ran the place. It was in their job description.”

  “Of course it was. Does she still work?”

  “Nope. Sold it a few months ago. She’s retired now, and focused on finding me a wife.”

  I attempted to appear nonplussed as the butterflies in my stomach went nuts. “Uh-huh. So, do you bake? That might work in your favor.”

  “No, no baking.” One corner of his mouth bent upward. “But I could calculate a couple logarithmic functions that would make your toes curl.”

  “Ew. Math. Do you have any other annoying habits I should know about?” I winked at him and smiled.

  He sat forward, crossed his forearms, and leaned on the table. “Hmm . . . let’s see. I keep track of pretty much everything in my life on a spreadsheet. Does organization qualify as a bad habit?”

  “Only if you expect the same kind of freakish compulsion from me.”

  To my relief, he threw his head back and laughed.

  For a first date, I thought, this is going extremely well.

  I called my sister the minute I got home. “I really, really like him,” I said. “He’s smart, he’s funny, and I’m pretty sure he thinks I’m smart and funny, too. He took my smart-ass commentary like a pro.”

  “Did he kiss you?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “And . . . ?”

  “And everything south of the border pretty much melted.”

  It didn’t take long for Martin and me to begin spending almost every evening together. His linear brain served our lovemaking well. He possessed a scientist’s determination to understand what pleasured me most.

  “Hmm,” he’d murmur, running his fingertips up and down the curve of my waist to the generous swell of my hips. “What happens when I do this?”

  My eyes would close and I’d shudder as goose bumps popped up across my skin.

  He’d smile, then move his fingers a little lower. “What about this?”

  Afterward, he didn’t want to sleep. He wanted to talk. Our conversations went on for hours. He thought my burgeoning career as a journalist was fascinating; I admired how he spent his days teaching young minds how to navigate complex mathematical theory. Though he struggled with how little money he was making as a teacher, he said that seeing students suddenly grasp a concept that had previously eluded them more than made up for the lack of financial reward.

  A few weeks into dating, things felt solid enough between us that Martin invited me to meet his mother. We had lunch at Alice’s favorite German eatery down in Pioneer Square. At her insistence, I agreed to let her order for all of us: feather-light potato dumplings served with a creamy bacon sauce.

  “Holy butter, Batman,” I remarked after I’d practically licked my plate clean. “That was amazing. Is there a way I can become an honorary German?”

  Martin leaned over and whispered in my ear, “German by injection, perhaps? I have just the tool . . .”

  I punched him playfully and he pulled away, grinning.

  “Tell me, Cadence,” Alice said, ignoring our antics. “Do you want children?” She didn’t speak with much of an accent, but the edges of her words were noticeably clipped, as though she were forcibly restraining herself from giving you a piece of her mind.

  “Mama . . .” Martin began, but I set my hand on his forearm and squeezed.

  “No, it’s okay,” I said. Our conversation had been fairly tame up to this point; part of me welcomed a more challenging subject. “I’m only twenty-six, Mrs. Sutter. I’ve been pretty focused on my work at the paper. I haven’t given babies much thought, to tell you the truth.”

  “But you want them,” she said. “You aren’t one of those girls who think they’re not cut out to be a mother, are you? A career girl.” She said “career” the same way she might have said “hooker.”

  I tilted my head and gave her a closed-lipped, tight smile before responding. I had to be careful here. I wanted to make a good impression. “Well. My career is definitely important to me. And actually, I think it’s a good thing that women can decide for themselves whether or not they want kids. There’s no law that says it’s some kind of requirement of womanhood.”

  “Perhaps there should be,” Alice said.

  “Mama, please,” Martin said. “Leave poor Cadence alone.”

  “Martin,” Alice said. The word was sewn through with warning.

  Martin sat back in his chair and pressed his lips into a thin line. His acquiescence was surprising, but I assumed he did it to avoid a knock-down, drag-out with his mother in front of me. I imagined him chewing her out later, after he dropped me off at home. I imagined him standing up for the woman he loved.

  “Don’t you consider owning your bakery a career?” I said, unable to keep myself from making this point.

  Her eyes narrowed the slightest bit, though the rest of her face remained impassive. “Yes. I do. But I would have given it up immediately if having my bakery meant I wouldn’t have had Martin. He was the most important thing. Always. No question. He still is.”

  Martin nudged the edge of his foot against mine beneath the table. I nudged his back and took a deep breath before speaking again.

  “Like I said, I haven’t thought about it a lot, but if I found the right man, then yes. I’d want to have a baby with him.” I looked at Martin. “Someday.”

  Two months after that luncheon, Martin asked me to move into his Capitol Hill apartment. My mother approved of this living arrangement; his mother did not. The fact that Martin didn’t let Alice’s opinion sway him reassured me. For a while, we enjoyed that honeymoon stage of nesting, when I still found it adorable that he needed all the canned food labels facing in the same direction and he didn’t complain that the contents of my closet were strewn across the bedroom floor.

  That blissful period of time came to an end on a crisp December evening. I was curled up on the couch with a book when he stepped in from our bedroom, holding a white sheet of paper.

  “A note from my mom,” he said, waving it at me.

  “Let me guess,” I joked. “Thanking me for all my help at Thanksgiving?” I had not been allowed in the kitchen to help with the food preparation during my first holiday spent at Martin’s childhood home. “Oh, no,” Alice said. “Don’t bother. Really. I’ll take care of it. You just sit. Relax.” So I lounged in the living room with Martin while she whirled around like a madwoman between the dining room and kitchen. The conversation over the dinner table began with her dramatic lamentation: “I can’t believe I did this whole meal all by myself! I swear I’ll have to hire help next year.” I had enough social graces to keep my mouth shut, though Martin and I laughed about it in the car on the way home.

  Standing there in our apartment a couple of weeks later, Martin looked uncomfortable, clutching the e-mail. “No, no thank-you note,” he said. “Actually, she made a list of what you ate. With calorie count.” He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing visibly up and down beneath the thin skin of his neck.

  My mouth dropped open. “Are you kidding me?”

  He took a step toward me. “Now, don’t get upset . . .”

  “Unbelievable.” I threw my book to the floor with a loud thump. Martin stopped in his tracks. “You’re going to defend her?�
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  “She read an article, honey,” he began. “With a list of the calories people typically consume . . .”

  “Stop.” I held up my hand, just in case he was tempted to believe I wasn’t serious. “Just stop it right there.” Pursing my lips together, I pushed a couple of breaths out through my nose. “Why are you telling me this? Maybe you’re concerned about my weight?” I was not a gym bunny. I had a belly. When not safely ensconced in the proper combination of wire and spandex, my breasts bordered on cartoonish.

  “No,” he sighed. “You know I love your body. She just asked me to tell you about it. I really think she meant well. She says she’s concerned about your health.”

  I snorted at this. “Please. My health is just fine. You’re the one with the high blood pressure. Did she make a list for the food you ate?”

  “No, but—” he attempted, but I cut him off.

  “You know what? She can go fuck herself. You both can.”

  It was our first official fight. The next day, I found the e-mail in the recycle bin and experienced great pleasure in pushing it through the paper shredder at work. Martin brought home flowers that night and apologized profusely for his misstep.

  “It’s just the way she is,” he said. “Maybe you could talk with her. Tell her how you feel.”

  “I’d feel a little strange doing that,” I said. “Couldn’t you do it?”

  “And say what?”

  “That her e-mail was totally offensive. That she hurt my feelings.”

  He sighed. “She won’t get it. She’s a very factual person.”

  “What would you do if it was you? If she hurt your feelings like this?”

  “I don’t let her hurt my feelings. And even if she did, whining about it is not who she raised me to be. I told you she’s old-fashioned. She’s also a very strong woman. It’s not worth the energy trying to get her to change. She won’t.”