The Things We Do for Love by Margot Early

the conclusion that he’d never been married, and she’d been wrong about that.
    Anxious to cover the moment, she said casually, “Were you married long?”
    “Four and a half years, which I realize gives me far less insight into the married condition than someone who has been married for ten years—or forty, as my parents were when my father died.”
    That was smooth, Mary Anne acknowledged. ThoughJacqueline Billingham would never show herself to be a woman who wondered if a person was divorced—being more the type to ignore the fact that anyone got divorced—Graham had decided to present his parents’ credentials as people who had married for life and remained married.
    “How long ago was that?” Mary Anne asked, knowing that her grandmother was probably thinking her too forward with these questions. Sometimes she wondered if Nanna was ever curious about anything, because so many things seemed beneath her curiosity.
    Lucille, Mary Anne happened to know, was curious about many things, among them why Mary Anne herself was not yet married and when Jonathan Hale’s wedding was going to be. Lucille would never suspect Mary Anne of any hanky-panky, as she would call it, with a man engaged to another woman. On the other hand, the possibility that an engaged man might make inappropriate advances toward Mary Anne was not beyond her imaginings. Mary Anne knew this because Lucille had asked rather coolly if Mary Anne had gotten that work question taken care of.
    Mary Anne had found herself unable to admit that she’d be having dinner with Jonathan the following night. Instead, she’d simply nodded.
    Now, though Lucille was absorbed in a quick and efficient cleanup of the couch, Mary Anne knew that she was just as interested in Graham Corbett’s marriage as Mary Anne herself was.
    Graham sipped his wine and said, “Briony died seven years ago.”
    Mary Anne didn’t expect to be shocked by this—it wasone of the two possibilities for his marriage’s end. But she felt it. It was sort of a heavy weight inside her.
    Of course, nobody asked how she had died.
    And even Nanna, Mary Anne felt sure, wanted to know.
    Graham didn’t say.
    Knowing it was incumbent upon her to say something to move them all beyond the topic, Mary Anne said, “I’m very sorry.” She gave a just-long-enough pause, during which he only nodded, then said smoothly, “Nanna’s been without Grandpa for fifteen years now.”
    “My husband was a physician,” Nanna said pleasantly. “He had a practice on Stratton Street behind the Embassy Building.”
    “The brick office where the attorneys are now?” Graham asked, taking his cue as he was supposed to. “I like the ivy.”
    “It’s hard on brick,” Lucille remarked.
    Mary Anne had a difficult time keeping her mind on the ensuing conversation, which covered both West Virginia horticulture and architecture.
    Finally, Nanna said it was time for her to get to bed, for Graham to say that he’d stayed too long, for his hostesses to protest and for him to say, “I just wanted to speak with Mary Anne about work for a moment. It’s been such a pleasure meeting you.” He rose when Nanna did, remained standing until she’d made her way out of the room.
    While Lucille helped Nanna upstairs, Graham and Mary Anne remained alone in the living room. Now she could indulge her own curiosity by asking how his wife had died, but maybe good manners had affected her more deeply than she’d previously realized.
    Graham sat down again, not on the chair where he hadbeen but on the couch beside Mary Anne. Of course, he kept an appropriate space between them. If he was the kind of man who would put a physical move on her in an inappropriate way—and Mary Anne doubted he was that kind of man—then the atmosphere of Nanna’s house would have forbidden it.
    He said, “I wanted to bring you a packet of information about the show, but I forgot.” He shook his head at his own mistake. “I’ll bring it by tomorrow