Free The Color of Family by Patricia Jones

exquisite-looking woman who seduced every one of his senses. But here, in his sister’s office, chatting with three married women, two of them very obviously pregnant, why couldn’t he have just said yes, I am headed toward marriage with Maggie? It troubled him in a way he couldn’t have imagined it ever would, mostly because until now—with that question put to him twice within one month by perfect strangers—the thought of marrying Maggie had never entered his mind. Maybe it was that she was nine years his senior. Maybe it was her college-bound daughter that made him more aware, each and every time he saw her, that Maggie was older. It didn’t much matter, though, because he could never say itout loud. Merely thinking it made him a pig, he knew. So why was he with her?
    There was something about Maggie that had always made him feel as if he’d known her forever. It was a familiarity that he took with its thorns and its blooms. One that made him as comfortable as it at times made him equally uncomfortable. And the only word that came to his mind when trying to define her was tenacious —a quality that, in his opinion, few can carry off with any modicum of grace. Yet Maggie was one who purposely straddled the line between tenacious and insufferable but did not cross it. And that, he supposed, was what kept him with her.
    â€œSo there’re no wedding bells ringing for you and Maggie, huh?” a voice asked him.
    With a sudden turn of his head, he found Sharon smiling at him, expectation and a particular eagerness on her face. He could never be certain, but Aaron thought he knew women and their ways well enough to know when one had plans for him, and this woman, he thought, had rather high hopes for him. So he smiled and replied, “You never know what the future holds.”
    â€œThat’s true enough, but you can certainly have a general idea based on what you want. It sounds to me like you don’t want marriage. At least not with her.”
    Aaron didn’t know whether to be angered or offended by the assumption, or dismayed by the accuracy of what she presumed. With this question, that wasn’t necessarily a question, he knew he had to respond in such a way that would tell the truth, yet would keep the hopes Sharon apparently had for him lying dormant. “Well, Sharon, the move toward marriage is an organic process, and it takes as long as it’s going to take.”
    â€œI guess,” she noted distractedly. Then she said, “It’s just that you’re a nice guy, Aaron, and I would hate to see you marry hastily out of some sort of loyalty to the history and comfort you may have with her. Trust me when I tell you, that would be a disaster.”
    â€œI believe you,” he said plainly, as his attention was pulled, but mostly forced by his own will, back to the magazines on the coffee table. What was it about babies that made them unable to inspire men in the same way they inspired women? But as he gave the question a second pass, he thought it might be best to wonder what it was about men that couldn’t be inspired by babies. So heturned back to Sharon, and pointing to the coffee table said, “How does it work for you women when it comes to these babies?”
    Sharon giggled and said, “I’m not so sure I understand what you mean.”
    â€œWell, what I mean is how is it that a man and a woman can look at a baby, the same baby, or even a picture of a baby and feel entirely different about it?”
    â€œIt’s in our blood to be maternal, Aaron. That’s all.”
    â€œSo what, men don’t have anything in their blood that makes them paternal?”
    Sharon looked up into the fluorescent light, as if hoping to find the answer written in the glow, then said as she looked slowly back at Aaron, “I think it’s different. I think, for men, the baby has to be born and tangible, and it has to be theirs for them to