Page 40 of Nineteen Seventy-Six

No, he decided, he just had limits, same as any man, and fighting with her wasn’t in the cards today.

When he returned, Cordelia had hitched her dress into a knot at her side, sleeves pulled up, hair held back with her reading glasses. Her arms were buried under the hood to the elbows, and then she slid down, on her back and under the car, held aloft by ramps, scraping the pans under where she’d loosened the plug.

Sometimes—and this was one of those times—he realized he didn’t know his wife at all.

“Filter?”

“Huh? Oh. Yeah.” Charles knelt and placed it in her impatiently waving hand.

“It still needs to drain a bit, but easier to keep it nearby, so we don’t lose it.” She extracted herself from under the car. She was covered in oil, her dress ruined. Sepia smudges stained her cheeks. He resisted the urge to wipe them away; pushed aside the errant notion that she was, sometimes, actually quite pretty.

Until she opened her mouth.

“Thanks,” he grumbled.

“What was that?”

“I said thanks,” he said, louder, but strained.

“Next time, just hire a mechanic,” she said, blowing a stray hair out of her dirty face. “Of all the things to be cheap about, I swear, Charles.”

“I wasn’t being cheap,” he defended. I just wanted to feel like one of those salt-of-the-earth men, just for a little while.

“Anyway,” Cordelia said, wiping her hands on a shop towel he hadn’t seen her pull out. “Give that a good fifteen, twenty minutes to drain. It’s muddy because you haven’t changed it in way too long. You’re lucky the damn engine hasn’t exploded. If you still need my help, when it comes time to swap out the filter, call… a mechanic,” she finished, with a hard look that made him think, ahh, welcome back, there you are.

“I can do it,” he insisted, but he’d wait until she was gone into town to call his mechanic.

“Sure,” she replied, and he wanted to slap the subsequent look from her face. “About the nanny.”

“Look, it was my idea, not hers.”

“Oh, I know,” Cordelia said, her smile growing from the corner of her mouth. “Lisette wasn’t born looking for others to do things for her. If I had to guess, I’d say you’re fighting about this. Am I right? Is this a sore spot between you two?”

It was, but he wouldn’t give her the pleasure. “She wants to raise her own kid. Who am I to stop her?”

“Spoken like a true man.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing, only I can’t wait to see the medals she gives you for changing diapers, taking the baby for a spin in the stroller, and the occasional game of peek-a-boo.”

“Spoken like a woman who’s missed half her son’s life while she was off having never-ending spa days with the women her father paid to be her friend.”

“Remind me again, Charles,” she said, turning halfway to the house for her final twist of the knife. “What was Nicolas’ first word?”

“Cambridge suits you,” Colleen remarked with a smile after Evangeline sat back down in her seat at the outdoor café along Boston Common.

“This is a nice surprise,” Evangeline said, but she looked more wary than anything else. “Doesn’t your flight to Edinburgh pass through New York?”

“Just as easy to go through Boston, turns out.”

“Where are Noah and Amelia?”

“Oh, Noah took her to explore some Revolutionary war ship in the harbor,” Colleen said with a flip of her hand. “He’s a bit of a war historian, I’m learning. He was very excited about seeing all the founding father memorabilia and telling Amelia about it, even if she won’t remember a thing.”

“I’d like to have met her, you know.”

Colleen’s face turned immediately stricken. “Evie, I completely forgot you hadn’t. My mind is all over the place these days. Maybe we can meet them at the harbor after lunch?”

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