I began having doubts about marrying Charlie five short days before Christmas. Five equally short days before our long-planned Christmas Eve wedding.

It was a little late for second thoughts. We were seated in the pastor’s office, backs pressed firmly against hard wooden chairs, ankles neatly crossed below our knees, hands clasped politely, discussing the fine print of how our wedding vows would read.

“‛Obey’ is such an old-fashioned-sounding word,” Charlie was saying with a sniff. “Couldn’t we substitute a more egalitarian concept? You know. Like ‘I promise to give due consideration’ to whatever she might want?”

The pastor did a little sniffing of his own before tugging nervously at his clerical collar. “Well, I suppose there’s a first time for everything.”

That’s when the F-bomb hit. The Francine-bomb.

“We pretty much agree on everything anyway, Francine and I,” Charlie insisted, his fingers tightening around mine as he gazed lovingly into my eyes. “Don’t we, honey?”

A sentiment which would’ve been completely unremarkable, except for the fact that my name is Kathleen.

Francine would be his secretary. His ‘work wife,’ as he jokingly calls her.

I tugged my hand free. “What did you just call me?”

Charlie’s eyebrows broke for the ceiling, a picture of injured innocence. “Honey. I called you honey, Sweetheart!”

My eyebrows clashed somewhere in the center of my brow, like the crash of competing armies. “Don’t ‘honey’ and ‘sweetheart’ me! That was a Freudian Francine-slip if I ever heard one. Is there some reason you’ve got Francine on the brain?”

His eyes darted nervously toward the preacher. Perceiving no help there, they darted nervously back to me again.

“Cer—certainly not! Francine and I have just been putting in — extra hours. The Thorssen file, you know. Or maybe it was the Drinkmuller file. One or the other. So you know, working late, and –” He yawned broadly and fake-ly. “– and, you know, spending lots of time in the, um, office together, so her name just – stuck out in my brain.”

‘Stuck out’ reminding me of her pointedly-displayed 42Ds. My eyes narrowed at Charlie a little further.

“Are you sure there isn’t something you need to tell me, before we move on from discussing the word ‘obey’ to ‘’til death do us part’?”

“Well, now,” said Charlie, two fingers digging at his own collar now. “I was meaning to bring that up today, actually. ‘Death’ is such a final-sounding concept. And Francine and I – well, she suggested maybe we could modernize this whole marriage arrangement. Loosen up the rules a little.”

The pastor was distinctly red around the gills by this point. He closed his tending-the-flock pre-marriage handbook with a decided snap. One hand stirred the air gingerly, encompassing both of us. “Perhaps I should leave the two of you alone to discuss a few things in private. . .”

He didn’t wait around for any noises of agreement. The office door closed behind him with a distinct bang.

I folded my arms across my chest. This was too small a town for things to go unnoticed. I’d heard rumors. Whispers I’d blithely pushed away.

“Charlie Parker, tell me the truth. Are you and Francine –?”

He caught the direction of my eyes. He hung his head, working his lower lip between his teeth as if trying to figure out what to say that would stop a certain nearby hymnal being deployed in a painfully non-ecumenical manner.

“Maybe we could just dispense with the vows and all of that. I mean, you can keep the ring. And we can still have the party.” Charlie’s face was approaching the shade of crimson I normally associate with raw tuna. “It will be Christmas Eve, after all. We could just add a little extra spike to the eggnog and start serving drinks early. The guests might not even notice there wasn’t actually an ‘I do.’”

I snatched up the hymnal the pastor had left on his desk and tapped it rhythmically against my knee. It sure did make a satisfying slap. Narrowing my eyes, I considered. A well-aimed toss to erase that guilty smile? A bookish missile toward a reddening ear? Or maybe I should aim for some other wayward part of his anatomy?

And then – thoughts of hymnal-throwing violence suddenly dissipated. Gently, I replaced the hymnal on the pastor’s desk and stretched myself proudly to my full five-foot-two-and-a-half.

“Congratulations, Charles Weston Parker.” It was a low blow. I knew he hated his middle name. “You just got yourself an un-wedding for Christmas. And I just got myself that trip to Tahiti I always wanted. Or maybe Bora-Bora. I’m still deciding.”

“B-b-but,” his lower lip was trembling. “The wedding insurance we bought won’t cover it if we change our mind. I already checked!”

I pulled the diamond-chip engagement ring off my finger and tossed it on the desk. “Then you and Francine better plan to drink a whole lot at the big party five days from now if you’re going to get your money’s worth.”

I paused with one hand on the doorknob, watching his face as my message sank in.

“Okay, okay. So I’m a cad. A heel. Too immature to be ready for marriage. I get it. You definitely deserve something for me dumping this on you at the last minute. But where am I supposed to come up with the money to send you to Tahiti?”

I smiled sweetly, already starting to plan what bathing suit to bring.

“That’s something I guess you and Francine will just have to have a long, hard talk about and figure out together. Or maybe the threeof you will have to figure out.”

His face twisted in confusion. “The three of us?”

That’s when I realized maybe Francine had kept a few secrets, too. My grin widened.

“You, Francine . . . and Francine’s husband, the chief of police. She told you about that, didn’t she?!” 

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