'Don't say that,' he whispered. Then, after a minute he said, 'You're Catholic. You can't divorce me.'
'I can live here,' she said. 'Maybe after I get my head in the right place you can come visit me sometimes. Maybe we can get back together again, Jim. But right now I just don't know. I'm afraid of marriage. I can't help thinking it's cheating me out of something – my own life, my own friends, my own fulfillments. I don't know what.'
Jim kissed her gently on the forehead, then tilted her chin up with the fingers of one hand so that she would have to look him in the eye. 'You're treating marriage like some kind of Big Bad Wolf,' he said. 'We're too good together to live apart. And I need you, Val. Really. I do.'
'I need you, Valerie. Really I do,' Rich whined from the couch, his chin propped on his hands as he looked down at his brother and sister-in-law.
'Drop dead, Bud,' Jim told him, without looking away from Valerie's eyes.
Rich began to sing: 'Who's afraid of the big bad wolf, the big bad wolf, the big bad wolf…'
'I am, Jim,' Valerie said softly, her voice hardly audible as she answered his sincere gaze with a look of her own – equally sincere, yet different. 'I am,' she repeated. 'I am.'
