"Pardon?"
"Nothing. It's nice that you two are so happy," I said and pulled my chair up to the desk, intending to return to my work and end this silly chitter-chatter before it really had begun.
"Well, we have our little ups and downs just as any couple would, but overall . . ."
I gazed up at him. He was having some last minute stage fright, I thought. Maybe he wasn't as stupid as he appeared. Suddenly, I did feel sorry for him.
"My sister is lucky to have landed a catch like you, Carson."
"Oh no," he said modestly, his face turning a bright pink, "I'm the lucky one."
"It's generous of you to say that," I said, "considering her troubled past."
"What's that?" He smiled with question marks in his eyes. "Troubled past?"
He clutched his hat against his chest as if it were a shield to protect him from the slings and arrows I might throw his way.
I smiled with bitter sweetness.
"Well, now that you're practically a member of our family, it's not wrong for you to be aware that Belinda's had problems. She was in finishing school, you know, but it didn't work out and we had to bring her home."
"Oh that, yes," he said with a look of relief, "She told me all about it."
"Told you? Told you what?" I said sitting back again, my finger tips pressed against each other.
"How she was wrongly accused of stealing some girl's jewelry in the dorm and how the other girls, all jealous, took the other girl's side. She couldn't continue living there under those
circumstances," he declared with the firmness of a protector.
"Is that the fairy tale she devised?"
"Excuse me?"
"Belinda was expelled, Carson. You might as well know the truth. You're going to discover it anyway someday."
"Expelled for stealing," he said nodding.
"No, not for stealing," I replied. He stared a moment, looked at the doorway and then sat.
"What was it then?"
"Let's call it promiscuity," I said. His eyebrows nearly leaped off his face.
"Promiscuity?" He paused, raising the level of his courage so he could say his words. "You mean of a sexual nature?"
"I don't know any other," I said as sweetly as I could. "But she learned her lesson from that, as well as the other things," I said. "You shouldn't be concerned now."
"What other things?"
"Problems she had when she was in high school," I said as casually as I could. "All girls have some."
"Did you?"
"Nothing like the ones Belinda had, but Belinda is Belinda," I replied.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"We're all individuals, Carson. Some of us are more liberal with our bodies than others, have greater appetites. It's what makes for horse races, right? Differences? You love her because she's who she is, don't you?"