Shame. And fruitcake.

I imagine every marriage has a dynamic that centers on a deep, dark secret. I know mine does, and it surfaces every year at this time. It's the week before Christmas, the doorbell rings, and someone wearing brown hands you a box. A green cardboard box. A green cardboard box that has been shipped for Corsicana, Texas, and holds a Collins Street Bakery pineapple pecan cake. You blush, your stomach does a flip flop. You get back inside and you say to your wife, Hey, Craig's sent us another fruit cake, ha ha. And you know for the next week you'll be leading a life of shame. Sneaking into the kitchen each evening while your wife is a few rooms away, prizing the lid of the can open, cutting off another hunk of that sticky sickly sweet cake and shoving it into your mouth, chewing so quickly you're afraid you might bite yourself. And then you feel a little nauseous. And fat. And you want more. You want all of it.

And a week later you start wondering how you can get the tin out of the kitchen and the house without making your wife wonder, Hey, where's that fruitcake Craig sent?