“You don’t do that.”
David shrugged. “I work cases differently. I’m looking someone in the eye, listening to what is said, watching for the lie. I’m intense but in a different way. I give the work my focus and a lot of hours, but it’s not doing what you describe as your process. To each his own. We both get the job done.”
“How to have a life when that’s how I work, that’s the mystery,” Evie said. “When you’re having a meal together with Maggie, she’s humming a few bars and asking what you think, ‘Do you like this song fragment?’ With me, I’m likely thinking, ‘I bet he gutted the guy with a fishing knife, and he’s probably still got the knife in his tackle box’—not exactly the kind of remark you can share across the table. And when my mind is there—on a murder or something worse—it’s hard to shift back to pleasantries about the blueberry muffins being extra good this morning.”
David smiled. “Point taken.” He pulled open the door to the coffee shop. “Job collisions and how your mind works aside, do you want to get married?”
“That seems to depend on when you ask, which is part of this problem—I honestly don’t know.”
He ordered two hot chocolates with extra whipped cream. They started the walk back, Evie’s hands wrapped snugly around the warm cup.
“You really do need to make one of your two-column lists,” David advised. Evie simply nodded, not sure what she’d even put on one.
They walked a minute in silence.
“An observation, Evie? If you wanted to get married, you’d be saying yes to Rob. You haven’t told me one concern yet about him—his character, his job, his history—just that his parents don’t see you as the right one for him. It’s a good sign when a guy makes his own choice rather than simply echoing his parents. Given he loves you, he’s probably the right guy.”
Evie nodded. “The question really is, do I love him?”
“I’d say that’s the question,” David agreed.
“I’m probably overthinking it.”
“I’ll make a guess you tend to do that,” David replied lightly.
Evie smiled. “How did you know you were in love with Maggie?”
“Everything in me said I loved her—emotions, heart, dreams. She was it.”
“You’re not going to be much help.”
David laughed. “Can you see yourself spending a lifetime together?”
“Yes.”
“Do you miss not seeing him?”
“It’s more like . . . like I would deeply feel the void if he were not around to be with. But we’re not everyday close, like some dating couples are. You probably talk to Maggie more than I do Rob.”
“Make your lists, Evie,” he said around a chuckle. “There’s a reason probably unrelated to Rob that has you shying away from marriage. ‘Single’ isn’t the answer unless it’s actually what you want for yourself. And you really don’t strike me as one who wants to spend her life on her own. Your voice softens when you talk about him.”
“Ann has some reservations about him being the right guy for me.”
“She knows you both well?”
“She knows me as well as anyone. Rob she’s met a few times.”
“Then listen to her concerns, weigh them on your list. And quit grimacing over the idea of a list—it’s just a tool, forcing you to think clearly on paper, a way to dig down to the root of a matter that has you so uncertain.”
“It’s the very fact I need to make one that has me grimacing. You didn’t have this kind of stress when you thought of a future with Maggie.”
“Sometimes love comes easily, and sometimes it’s the most challenging decision a person ever makes. That reality doesn’t make one way right and the other wrong, it just is. The love underlying marriage is more than an emotion, more than a set of facts adding up to a decision. It’s the choice that this is the person I’m going to stay with for the rest of my life. It’s something you have to make with your head and your heart, Evie. It’s a decision with consequences. More time can be good and helpful, adding new information. But when it’s time to make the decision, you need to make it. Avoiding that step doesn’t get you anywhere productive.”
“You make it sound so . . . well, so easy, David.”
He opened the door to their temporary offices. “Not easy. Just necessary. Life is mostly captured in the decisions we make, the choices, the pivots. You’re at one of those points. Accept it, Evie. When it’s time to decide, you pray, you think, you listen to your mind and heart, and then you make the decision.”