“Not at all, dear. Sex talk is my favorite. More bacon?”
Jenna accepted a piece and tried to think of a way to change the subject. Thankfully, Mia obliged.
“I almost forgot,” Mia said, dropping her fork and grabbing for her purse. She rifled through it, her mouth still full of bacon as she rummaged through the contents of her oversized tote. “I had some extra wedding photos printed for you, Aunt Gertie. Jenna said you wanted to see them.”
“Oh! Just let me wash up. This is so exciting!” Gertie bustled over to the kitchen sink and returned moments later wiping her hands on her apron. She took the envelope from Mia and sat down. She slid the pictures out and began to flip through them, clucking the whole time.
“You two look so in love—oh, would you look at this one? These lavender rosebuds look gorgeous with that red hair of yours!”
“Thanks, they’re called sterling silver roses,” Mia said. “My mother had them in her wedding bouquet. That’s her veil, too.”
Gertie beamed and flipped to the next image. “This must be your mom here?”
Mia nodded, and Jenna blinked back an unexpected wash of tears. Her own mother had died in a car accident two months after Jenna’s sixteenth birthday, leaving Aunt Gertie to tend to Jenna for her remaining high school years. It was one of many reasons Jenna had been eager to repay the favor by taking Gert in last fall.
As though sensing a shift in Jenna’s mood, Gertie met her eyes. Gert’s expression didn’t change, but she reached beneath the table and touched Jenna’s knee. Jenna swallowed and placed her hand on Gertie’s. Gert smiled, then turned back to Mia.
“Here’s another great one of you and Mark,” she said. “This neckline is so flattering on you.”
Mia laughed. “Gotta show off the pregnancy boobs while I’ve got ’em.”
“You look beautiful,” Jenna said, squelching an unwelcome twist of envy for her friend. She was thrilled for Mia, delighted to see her moving on with her life after a rocky divorce and the loss of a pregnancy just a month after moving to Portland two years ago. It was how the two of them had bonded, as the only unmarried people in a support group for women who’d suffered recent miscarriages.
She reached for Mia’s hand and gave it a squeeze, releasing any jealous feelings she might’ve had.
Gertie gasped. “This photo—this must be the first time he’s seeing you in the dress?”
“I know, isn’t that amazing?” Mia said. “I’ve never had anyone look at me that way before. Not ever.”
“I wish I could have seen it in person,” Gertie sighed.
“You were there in spirit,” Mia said, giving the older woman a quick hug. “It was important to Mark and me to keep things small and intimate—just the two of us and immediate family. I’m sure you understand.”
“Big weddings are too expensive,” Jenna agreed, trying not to think of her own broken engagement, of the two hundred cream-colored invitations buried somewhere in the back of her closet.
Mia nodded in agreement and slid a hand over her impressively large baby bump. “Exactly. It didn’t seem right to spend any money on a wedding. Not while I’m still digging myself out of the financial pit of divorce.”
Gertie continued flipping through the photos. “I know what you mean. I met with an attorney last week about—well, about a new project I’m working on,” she said, glancing at Jenna. “Lawyers are so expensive!”
“Particularly when you’re divorcing one,” Mia muttered. “Not that I blame him for being bitter. I’m the one who had the affair. I’m the one who screwed up.”
Jenna patted her friend’s hand and looked over Gertie’s shoulder at a picture of Mia and Mark feeding each other cake. They looked so happy, so in love.
“You did not screw up,” Jenna said, surprising herself with the force of her own insistence. She swallowed back an unexpected memory and focused on Mia. “You have an amazing new husband who adores you and a baby on the way. I know we didn’t know each other during your first marriage or when you and Mark began your—” she swallowed back the word affair, searching for a term that wouldn’t send Mia down a path of self-flagellation and guilt. “—your relationship. But I know you had to be terribly unhappy.”
“Unhappiness leads to desperation,” Gertie agreed, holding up a photo of Mia glowing and voluptuous in her maternity wedding gown. “But you’re happy now. That’s what matters.”
“That is what matters,” Jenna echoed and nabbed her best friend’s bacon.