even so

"What? You, won't be back til April?" Betty was shocked to hear Doris' words over her smart phone. She was having it way too easy in sunny Florida, even if Doris complained of the rain. Betty thought she would be back by March. "Did you fall in love with somebody?"

She was off with Marty, an old police buddy of her husband's.

"How could you say such a thing?" Doris still did phone calls everyday to check up on her husband at the Memory unit. He was healthy, just not always in the right mind. He liked to steal people food off their plate at supper and was sometimes a bear at midnight. He didn't want anyone looking, nor touching him, then.

"Well, he was the worst kind." Betty very well knew. She remembered the rumors about Doris' husband. She knew for a fact about his second family, and Doris knew too. "I don't blame you. If you do find somebody."

"I didn't call to fuss with you." Doris told her she'd made up her mind. She didn't like Nebraska winters. March could be awful cold. "Besides, you've got Ed, there."

"What is that suppose to mean?" Betty tensed, looking around wondering if anyone was around to hear in her warm kitchen. She looked out the window next to the sink and watched the soft snowflakes falling. It instantly gave her a chill.

"Oh, you have your ways." Doris' voice was full of laughter. "What did he do this time?"

"It's a little embarrassing." Betty sighed, thinking she needed to tell someone. "His boy, thinks something is going on..between us."

"Well, is there?" Doris asked.

"Of course not, He's..what..not even thirty-seven." Betty calculated the math on her fingertips. "He doesn't want me."

"But, do you want him?"

Betty didn't feel like answering that.

"You, better behave." Doris told her.

"I am. Besides, spring will come and he'll find someone and then leave." Betty was certain of it. She needed to keep telling herself this. Still, it brought her to tears, every-time. She hated for it to be the truth.

Of course, Doris reminded her, he had a good a job now. She didn't see him leaving anytime soon.