Page 23 of The Widow's Husband's Secret Lie
I hope I’m not making a terrible mistake.
23
Brant looks around our house,astonished. He admires our seventy-two-inch television, runs his fingers along our antique armoire, and then sinks into the cushions of our Italian leather sofa with a groan of ecstasy.
“Wow,” he finally says. “My brother did really well for himself.” But he is looking directly at me when he says those words.
I clear my throat. “Let me put on a little music.”
I tell Alexa to play Nickelback radio. As the tune of “Rockstar” fills the room, a smile spreads across Brant’s handsome features. I hover over the sofa, uncertain how to approach this fairly unique situation. I mean, this man is the identical twin of the husband I murdered, and I didn’t know he existed until five minutes ago. This can’t happen to people very often.
“Can I get you something?” I ask. “Some tea?”
“I hate tea.”
I gasp. “Oh my God, I hate tea too! I just… I only offered it to you because I thought…”
“It’s okay,” Brant says. “I understand. It’s the same nightmare that I have lived.”
I sink onto the sofa beside him, clasping my hands in my lap. “I don’t know why, but I feel this strange connection to you.”
“Because I look like Grant.”
“No,” I say firmly. “It’s more than that. I never felt this way about Grant. I loved him, of course, but…”
“No, I understand.” He furrows his brow. “That’s how I felt about Marnie. I loved her, but there was always something missing. But now that I’ve met you… It feels like we are two sides of the same coin.”
I lean forward eagerly. “Tell me what else you hate.”
“I hate so many things,” he muses. “I don’t know where to begin. I… I hate any book that won the Pulitzer Prize. I hate people who use Android phones. I hate dark chocolate. I hate tomatoes when they’re raw, but I love them when they’re cooked. I hate when a mystery book ends on a cliffhanger and you’re forced to read the second one just to find out who did it. I hate pennies.”
I get this dizzy, giddy feeling. I hateallthe same things that Brant hates. Especially pennies. I don’t understand why we even still have them. They got rid of the halfpennycenturiesago.
“Also,” he adds, “I hate that the United States is the only country that hasn’t switched to the metric system. It makes me so mad!”
“The metric system is clearly the best unit of measurement,” I say. “It makes so much more sense for everything to rely on multiples of ten. Like, twelve inches in a foot? What isthat? And it doesn’t in any way relate to 5,280 feet in a mile, which isn’t even a multiple of twelve! Our current system is basically a conglomeration of incoherent measurement systems.”
“I feel the exact same way,” he whispers.
I never dreamed I would find my other half, but everything Brant is saying resonates with me so deeply. I didn’t have these feelings even when Grant and I were still happy together. He didn’t evencareabout the metric system. Brant is so very different from my husband, even beyond the tiny mole near his right ear.
Yet my feelings are so inappropriate. I can’t fall for Brant. What would people think? And what about Marnie and all their many, many children?
“Would you like to have dinner with me tonight?” I blurt out.
“Yes,” he replies instantly.
For the first time in a very long time, I feel a surge of happiness. The two of us exchange dopey-eyed smiles, and I can tell he’s looking forward to this as much as I am. I don’t know if there’s any chance for a future between me and Brant, but I at least want to get to know him better.
“I have a few things I need to take care of,” he tells me. “How about if I pick up some dinner, and I’ll meet you back here at eight o’clock?”
“Sure,” I say. “Um, what are you thinking for dinner?”
“How about McDonald’s?”
I gasp again. “You read my mind.”
Grant only liked the fancy things in life. He would never have gotten a meal from a fast-food restaurant. Any life I would have with Brant would be very different from the one I had with my husband. And that is not a bad thing.
