Chapter Seventy-Seven

SUSAN’S SMILE brOADENED. I’d expected at least a little surprise at the proposal, but that’s just the way she is. One step ahead of me, all the time. While she seemed initially taken by joy at my question, something flickered for a moment in her eyes. I knew exactly what it was. Doubt. Fear. Because if the last few days had confirmed anything for her, it was surely that I was a trouble magnet. It wasn’t the house that sucked in ill fate, menace, and catastrophe. It was me. That malignant magnetism, and my loyalties, my sense of responsibility for the injustices that arose for the people I loved, my sheer dogheadedness: it was all going to make me a very dangerous husband.

And she’d had a dangerous husband before.

But I hoped, in that moment that she sat sitting there looking at me, that Susan could also see the fear in my eyes. I’d lost a wife before. I’d nearly lost her, too. And I knew my propensity to find myself surrounded by bad people and bad deeds didn’t just exist because I couldn’t walk by and let evil be done. There was something about me, too. Maybe I was cursed.

Being married to me would mean Susan was choosing to live the rest of her life in peril.

The doubt disappeared from Susan’s eyes. I don’t know what happy thought about me pushed her over the edge, but she seemed to decide then and there that whatever was coming, I was worth dealing with it.

“Go take a shower, and bring me a snack from the vending machine,” she said. “Do that and you’ve got yourself a deal.”