“I know you said you’d help me, Ellie, with the Lamaze stuff and everything. But this way you don’t have to go to those classes and shit.” She grimaced. “Alex took me to an information session at the hospital this week, to see what it was like and all. Man. Those leaders really try to scare the crap out of you.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” She looked worried. “I’m not so sure I wanna do it after all.”

“The Lamaze method?”

“The birth,” Di said.

I put my hand on her shoulder and squeezed lightly. “You’ll get through it just fine. Especially with Alex by your side.” I paused. “You must still really, really love him.”

She gave me a long look. “I do. And, El, he loves me, too. Neither of us ever stopped.”

So, it wasn’t much of a surprise when, four weeks later, my sister gave birth to a nine-pound, two-ounce baby boy she named Clifton Barnett Evans (since Di had never changed back her last name after the divorce). And, just after Clifton’s APGAR scores pronounced him to be in excellent health, Alex and Di got reengaged (which made that whole last-name thing really convenient). Wedding date to be announced soon.

And it was.

Three months after that, with the fresh chill of December blowing in the door, I entered Di’s new condo to find Clifton flashing his first smile and his proud mother announcing that she and Alex would get remarried early the following November.

“I wanna do it right this time,” Di said, bouncing my chubby, adorable nephew in her arms twice before holding him out to me. She knew I needed to have my baby fix when I came over.

I grabbed the little guy from her and buried my face in the softness of his rounded belly before cradling him tight and rocking him to my imaginary soundtrack of ’80s tunes. “You’ll have a lovely wedding,” I assured her. “You’ve put Mom on the case. Who could be more thorough?”

“I’m not worried about those kinds of details,” Di said. “I meant that I want to make sure I do the important things right. Like remembering to keep my vows with Alex — in sickness and in health and all that stuff. Like not drinking tequila from my shoe at the reception — that was stupid. And like — ” She shot me a look. “Having my sister be my maid of honor.”

A lump formed out of nothing in my throat. I couldn’t get a response out.

“Will you?” she asked me, looking as though she were holding her breath.

Tears threatened to spill down my cheeks, and I was having a devil of a time speaking. I clamped my mouth shut and nodded.

Di’s eyes looked suspiciously bright, too. She nodded back at me and then leaned in to give my cheek a quick kiss. “You’re such a geek,” she said, but the affection in her voice gave her away.

“I love you too, sis,” I said.


“Jingle Bell Rock” flooded the airwaves all that week. I remember because that was the song playing on the radio the evening I opened Terrie’s Christmas card.

There were other songs, too, of course, and other cards. Actually, I’d gotten so much pre-holiday mail I’d been joking with Jane about it. That, and the fact that the date was December sixteenth, her birthday, and I’d been alternating between humming Christmas carols and “Happy Birthday to You” all day long.

We’d just finished a rousing debate over mail delivery (Early nineteenth century British versus early twenty-first century American — which was more civilized? Discuss…) when I’d returned with the day’s postal stack from my mailbox. I tossed the bills into the Boring pile and turned right to the Newsy pile. The cards.

I’d gotten quite the assortment of newsworthy items that week already:

Tim signed his name to the bottom of a picturesque card that said only “Merry Christmas from Sunny Antigua.”

Mark and Seth crowed about their new puppy in their holiday letter. Named him Spider-Man because he kept climbing all over their polished Shaker furniture.

Kim, Tom and the kids claimed to be fine in their card, but Kim was getting antsy being a stay-at-home mom. Was thinking about going back to grad school. Maybe business. Maybe art therapy. She didn’t care. She just wanted to get out of the house.

Angelique and Leo, who’d had their triplets a couple months back (one girl, two boys) in California, sent a photo of their newly expanded family. They were hanging in there despite the sleepless nights, and Lyssa had proven to be a terrific older sister. “Thank God for her!” Angelique wrote. “She can change diapers like a pro.” They were seriously saving for her future Stanford tuition.

And, from my annual grad-school university alumni newsletter, came this shocker: Brent “Go Fish” Sullivan had departed this earth back in July. The victim of a fatal car crash. No reported surviving widow or children, but I figured there was probably a woman somewhere. No mention of substance-related causes but, considering he loved single-malt Scotch almost as much as he loved card games, that wouldn’t have surprised me either.

Regardless, I was rendered speechless when I saw his name in black ink on the “In Memoriam” page. And, to be completely honest, I was sincerely saddened.

I guess I’d hoped he’d live long enough to be redeemed. That he’d find someone he could be true to, even if he hadn’t yet married her. I wished for some kind of happy ending for him in part, I supposed, because I wished it for all of us. And, yes, for me especially.

So, when I saw the two cards that came in on Jane’s birthday, sure, I rolled my eyes at the first one. Dominic Reyes-Jones. But I opened up the envelope immediately. He was getting remarried, his card said. He’d had a tough start to the year — been out of work for a few months — but had gotten a new part-time job. The (latest) love of his heart and soul was taking him to the Greek Isles for their honeymoon. Life, he insisted, was fabulous.

Well, good for him. He was happily screwing someone else, literally, figuratively. That was fine by me. Hey, at least he wasn’t dead.

Terrie’s card I opened with much more genuine interest and anticipation. Inside I found a cute photo of her and the children, plus a handful of scented stationery sheets. She’d moved out of state again but not far, Iowa this time, following a job lead that had paid off. She’d gotten herself a place of her own and enrolled her kids in a good neighborhood school. Said she’d met a new man too. Everett. Planned to take things real slow.

I grinned at this and would’ve bet anyone willing to take me on that, when I invited her to Di and Alex’s second wedding next fall, she’d be bringing this Everett dude along. It was something about how she wrote his name, her script so precise. Or maybe it was in the way she went on about him for a full seven pages. Kind of a giveaway.

Then, on the last page of her letter she added this postscript:

Oh! I thought you’d want to hear the latest gossip. My sister Sabrina told me she ran into Nate…and that he told her that Sam Blaine was finally getting married. Guess he’s engaged to some woman in Boston. Poor girl, huh?

The words jumped off the pretty floral pages and punched me in the stomach. Sam? Engaged? To somebody else?

Really?

I reminded myself that it wasn’t as though I wanted to marry him. No. I simply liked the fantasy I’d created. It was the possibility I’d grown attached to…I told myself I didn’t want to see a romantic avenue I’d imagined get closed off. That it was for this reason alone that my hands trembled and my knees shook — a bizarre reaction that had nothing to do with the man himself.

Only, I felt numb everywhere, and I knew I’d been wrong about something. When Tim and I broke up, I believed heartache couldn’t get any worse. That by embracing the pain and letting everything inside me go soft, I’d recover faster.

It’d worked with Tim, but this case was different. Going soft made me feel the cruel edges of pain sooner, and they were sharper. Each sensation was more acute, more immediate, more devastating than I could’ve imagined, and the question barrage wouldn’t stop:

• Why didn’t I stay longer at the bookstore café that one day?

• Why didn’t I really talk to Sam when I’d had the chance?

• Why didn’t I run back down that plane ramp in Boston and call him from the airport?

• Why didn’t I open up my heart more readily instead of being paralyzed by old fears until it was too late?

• Why, why, why?

Goddamned story of my life.

Chapter 15

If the dispositions of the parties are ever

so well known to each other or ever so

similar beforehand, it does not advance

their felicity in the least.

 — Pride and Prejudice

Ten and a half months later, at age thirty-four, I was at my parents’ house — midweek, early November, up to my eyebrows in relatives — when the doorbell rang for the first time, at noon.

“I’ll get it,” the bride-to-be said around her last bite of lasagna Florentine. “It’s probably Alex.” And Di, knowing her ex-/future-husband well, was right.

“Hey, babe,” Alex said, kissing my sister and fourteen-month-old Clifton, then waving to the rest of us…the rest of us being me, my mom, my dad, Angelique, her husband Leo, all four of their children, my brother, his wife Nadia, their two boys and their collie, Fritz.

Various reciprocal greetings occurred, from handshakes to hugs to high fives. Mom shoved a plate of food at Alex, and Fritz contributed a friendly bark.

Dad said to Di’s fiancé, “The men are gonna watch some ESPN downstairs in ten minutes. A couple college basketball teams are playing. Wanna join us?”