Fran smiled ruefully. “I’m not fooling myself, Sunny. The five years I was married to Ernie took their toll on me, not only emotionally but physically.” Tears filled her eyes. “I’m a saggy, pudgy mess. What if Steve doesn’t like me?”
“Oh, Fran!” Sunny clasped her friend in a fierce hug. “You’re being ridiculous. Steve loves you.”
“I know he does.” Fran, looking sheepish, disengaged them. “We’ve slept together. I wanted to make sure about that the second time. Ernie’s beautiful body was all for show. He was lousy in bed.” She traced the seam of the bedspread with her fingernail. “But when Steve and I were together, it was darkly romantic. I made certain he didn’t see too much. But I’m worried about when we’re living together, when all the lights are on and he sees just how shapeless my breasts are and how lumpy with cellulite—”
“I can’t believe this!” Sunny took Fran’s shoulders between her hands. “You’ve never had a poor self-image. Why now?” Sunny looked at her friend shrewdly. “That’s not really it, is it?”
“You know me too well,” Fran grumbled.
“Spill it.”
“Maybe I’m having second thoughts.”
“About Steve?” Sunny asked quietly.
“No. I’m crazy about Steve. But I’m having second thoughts about getting into another marriage. In a way I envy you. You’ve dated tons of men. I never really dated anybody but Ernie. He was the only man I could see. Then Steve came along soon after my divorce. Maybe I should have moved away for a while. Gone to the city. Exposed myself to a different lifestyle. Lived like a swinging single.”
“It’s not all it’s cracked up to be, Fran. One can get very lonely.”
Fran’s attention immediately shifted from herself to Sunny. “Do you wish you had stayed here and married Don?”
“No, I’ve never regretted my decision not to marry him.”
“Sunny—”
“Don’t ask me, Frannie,” Sunny interrupted quickly, squeezing Fran’s hand as though to choke off her words. “If I ever told anybody my reason for walking out, I’d tell you. You know that.” She glanced down at their clasped hands, not really seeing them. Instead she was seeing again the shocked expressions on her parents’ faces when she had turned away from the altar and faced them with her astonishing announcement.
“It was something I had to do. I know people thought I was being characteristically fickle, but it wasn’t like that at all. It wasn’t a decision I made lightly. I would never have put my parents through something that embarrassing unless I had had a very good reason and felt that it was the wisest choice, if not the easiest. Please believe me.”
“You don’t have to justify yourself to me, Sunny. I’d never bring it up, except that I think you need to talk about it.”
“I can’t, Fran. Maybe sometime. But not right now.”
“Okay. Anyway, it’s lunchtime, and I promised the girls burgers at the Dairy Mart. Want to come along?”
Sunny smacked her lips as she jumped off the bed. “You bet. I haven’t had a Dairy Mart burger in over three years.”
“I wonder if they could make a hot peach sundae.”
“What happened to all those grim references to sagging and cellulite?”
Fran called for her daughters, who were skateboarding outside, to get into the car. “The crisis has passed. Blame my self-pity on biorhythms or hypoglycemia or just being a nervous bride. Steve’s crazy about me. Everything about me. For all the glamour in your life, Sunny, I wouldn’t trade places with you for anything in the world.”
Sunny wondered if Fran had discerned that things weren’t always as rosy as they seemed.
“Yum-my.”
“Um-huh.” Sunny was enraptured by her thick, juicy cheeseburger. It was the old-fashioned, pre-assembly-line kind made with meat cooked over charcoal and buns grilled in butter. The french fries were fat and hot out of the grease.
“I wasn’t talking about the food. I was talking about that.”
Sunny glanced up from her cheeseburger basket and followed Fran’s gaze through the windshield of her car. The sheriff of Latham Parish was walking toward the window where patrons of the drive-in restaurant placed their orders. Sunny could barely force down the bite that, up until then, she had been chewing with sybaritic pleasure.
She hadn’t seen Ty since Monday. All day yesterday, she thought he might phone or come by on one pretext or another. He could have used her “intruder” as an excuse to check on her. Or he might have reissued the invitation for a moonlight swim. But when he hadn’t made any attempt to contact her, Sunny had vacillated between relief and vague disappointment.
“He’s okay,” she said offhandedly.
Fran swung her head around to gape at her.