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to be your best man?”
    “He can’t make it.”
    I stiffened, dropping all pretense at smiling.
    “He has a part in a movie filming then,” Martin said expressionlessly. “He’s waited a long time for this part; he has lines and is on screen for several scenes . . . the hero’s best friend.”
    We looked at each other.
    “I’m sorry,” I said finally.
    Martin looked over the heads of the other diners. I was glad we were in one of the little alcoves that make Beef ‘N More at least a tolerable place to eat.
    “There’s something I want to talk to you about,” he said after a moment. The subject of Barrett was clearly closed.
    I shifted my face around to “Expectant.”
    “The garage apartment,” he said.
    I raised my eyebrows even higher.
    “I have a friend who just came into town from Florida. He lost his job. He and his wife are very capable people. I wondered—if you didn’t mind—if they could have the garage apartment.”
    “Of course,” I said. I’d never met a friend of Martin’s, an old friend. He had made a few connections locally, mostly at the Athletic Club, upper-management men like himself. “You knew him from—?”
    “Vietnam,” he said.
    “So what’s his name?”
    “Shelby. Shelby Youngblood. I thought . . . with all the renovation ... it might be nice to have someone else on the spot out at the house. Shelby will probably work out at Pan-Am Agra in shipping and receiving, but Angel, his wife, could be there when he’s not.”
    “Okay,” I said, feeling I’d missed something important.
    “When I found out Barrett couldn’t come,” Martin said, almost as an afterthought, “I called your stepfather, and he’s agreed to be my best man.”
    I smiled with genuine pleasure. In many ways, it was easier to marry an older man who was used to fending for himself. “That was a good idea,” I said, knowing John must have been pleased to be asked.

    We parted in the parking lot. He took off back to work, and I was going to my favorite paint/carpet/wallpaper store, Total House, to start the Julius place on its road to becoming our house. But halfway there, I pulled over to the curb and sat staring ahead, my window open for the cool fresh air.
    Martin, in his “mysterious” mode, had put one over on me.
    Who the hell was this Shelby Youngblood? What kind of woman was his wife? What sort of job in Florida had he lost, and how did he know where to find Martin? I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel, wondering.
    Probably this was the downside of marrying an older man who was used to fending for himself. He also was not used to having to explain himself. And yet Martin deserved to keep his past life a secret, I thought confusedly; I was hardly telling him all... No! I had told him everything that might make a difference to our life together. I wasn’t wanting to know the names of his sexual partners in the past years, which of course he should keep to himself. But I had a right, didn’t I, a right to know—what? What was really frightening me?
    But we hadn’t known each other that long, I told myself. We had plenty of time for Martin to tell me whatever heavy and grim passages from his past he wanted me to know.
    I was going to marry Martin. I started my car and pulled back into the modest stream of traffic that was Lawrence-ton’s lunch-hour rush.
    Because really, trickled on a tiny cold relentless voice in the very back of my mind, really, if you asked him and he told you, you might learn something that would force you to cancel the wedding.
    The prospect of being without him was so appalling, I just couldn’t risk it.
    At the second stoplight, I swept this all neatly under my mental carpet as prewedding jitters and took a right turn to Total House.
    There I made a few salesmen very, very happy.

    * * *
I met Martin at the Episcopal church, St. James, that night for our fourth premarital counseling session with Father Aubrey Scott. The two men were standing out in the