Another hot topic of conversation for Mrs. de Villiers is Blaine’s sister’s pregnancy. Vickie isn’t even due until the spring and doesn’t even know the baby’s sex yet, but Luke’s mother is already buying tiny onesies and booties and cooing over how much she can’t wait to have a grandchild of her own, making Luke look extremely uncom for table and putting back my woodland-creaturing of him weeks, possibly even months.

And Mr. de Villiers’s annoying quirk wasn’t much better. His was not looking where he’s going and consequently putting his foot through my Singer 5050—which I purposely moved from the dressing table to the floor beneath my hanging rack, thinking no one would trip over it there, since there was a metal bar in the way.

And yet somehow Luke’s father managed to destroy it… or at least the bobbin.

He apologized profusely and offered to pay for a new one. But I told him it was all right, that the machine was old and I’d been intending to get a new one anyway.

I swear I don’t know where some of the things that come out of my mouth even come from.

Anyway, they’re gone. They left Sunday afternoon, after much kissing and talk of all the fun they’re going to have at Château Mirac over Christmas and New Year’s. Of course, they pressured me to come along, but I could tell they didn’t really mean it. Well, Luke did, of course. And maybe his dad did.

But his mom? Not so much? The smile she gave me as she said, “Oh, do come, Lizzie, it will be such fun,” didn’t go all the way up to her eyes. They didn’t crinkle at the sides like they normally did when she smiles.

No. I know where I’m not wanted. And that’s at the de Villierses’ familial holiday celebration in France.

Which is fine. It is. It’s totally cool. I explained I only had the long weekend off anyway, which I’d be spending flying home to see my parents, before returning to work on Monday.

I don’t think it’s my imagination that Mrs. de Villiers looked kind of relieved about that. I mean, that she was getting her son all to herself.

Which you would think she’d realize makes the grandchild production thing kind of difficult. But maybe she has other candidates in mind… ones who aren’t working two jobs, one of them nonpaying, and the other hardly worth bragging to her girlfriends about. I mean, a receptionist? So not as glamorous, say, as an investment banker or market analyst…

Especially not the Monday after Thanksgiving, when everybody and their mother seems to want a divorce lawyer. Tiffany says the only busier time in the office is right after New Year’s, which is when a lot of proposals take place, so people want to come in for their prenups.

I’ve said, “Pendergast, Loughlin, and Flynn, how may I direct your call?” so many times, my throat is getting sore, and I’m starting to rasp a little. Fortunately, Tiffany has come in early (as usual) to shoot the breeze, and is willing to spell me for a few minutes while I run to the ladies’ room to spray a little Chloraseptic down my throat.

“So Raoul says he can get your friend Shari in to see his internist,” Tiffany says, as she takes my chair. “You know, if she’s still sick. Is she still sick?”

“She’s not sick,” I say, opening my drawer and pulling out my Meyers handbag—which barely fits in there, thanks to the back issues of Vogue which Tiffany insists on saving. “She and Chaz broke up.”

“They did?” Tiffany swings her wide, blue-eyed gaze up at me. “Right before your party? God, no wonder he said she was sick. How totally embarrassing. So is one of them moving out? Which one? Oh my God, why didn’t you tell me?”

Because I’ve been trying really hard not to mention anything about it to anyone—especially people like Tiffany who could conceivably say something to Chaz’s father. Obviously Luke knows, but he’s the only person I’ve told. I’m really trying not to be such a gossip these days. Shari asked me not to say anything to anyone until she’d had a chance to speak to Chaz about it—which I hope to God she has, because I don’t know how much longer I can keep from saying anything to him when he calls the office to return his father’s phone calls. Between that and the thing about Luke’s mom, I am BURSTING with secrets.

And it’s driving me mental.

“I don’t know,” I say. “Look, let me just go spray my throat and I’ll be right back—”

Tiffany doesn’t get a chance to reply, though, because the phone chirps and she has to grab it. “Pendergast, Loughlin, and Flynn, how may I direct your call?”

The ladies’ room of the law offices is actually situated outside the lobby, by the elevator doors. To get in, you have to punch in a code. This is not to keep random tourists from wandering in off the street to use the Pendergast, Loughlin, and Flynn bathrooms, since for one thing random tourists can’t even get into the building without an appointment and passing a security screening. I don’t actually know why all the offices in this building keep the doors to their ladies’ (and men’s. The management of this building is not sexist) rooms locked, and require a code to enter.

In any case, one of the duties of the receptionist at Pendergast, Loughlin, and Flynn is to give the code to any clients or visiting lawyers who ask for it. The code is very easy to remember: 1-2-3.

And yet some clients (and lawyers) have to be given the code two, even three times before they retain it. This can be annoying to the receptionist, though of course we never show it. Still, it makes me wonder why we need the lock at all, since in all the time I’ve been using the ladies’ room at Pendergast, Loughlin, and Flynn, no one has ever been in it at the same time I have. It’s the most underused bathroom in all of New York.

The day I go in to spray my throat (and put on a little lipstick and fluff up my hair) is no exception. I’m alone in the very clean, very beige bathroom. I’m gazing at my reflection in the huge mirror hanging above the sinks, grateful that last night I finally got to sleep in my own (well, Luke’s mother’s own) bed, instead of on the pull-out couch, because the bags under my eyes from tossing and turning around so much are finally starting to fade. I swear, when I am a certified wedding-gown specialist with my own shop, and I finally have some money to spare, I am going to buy one of those Pottery Barn pull-out couches that don’t have the metal bar across the middle, that are actually comfortable.

Well, first I’m going to buy my own apartment so I actually have a place to keep my stuff where it won’t get tripped over and broken.

Then I’m buying the couch.

And I probably won’t even have to worry about ever sleeping on it again, because the next time Luke’s parents come to visit, they can just stay at Luke’s mother’s apartment, and not mine—

It’s as I’m enjoying this lovely fantasy that I hear something. At first I think it’s just the heel of my shoe on the tiles beneath me. But then I realize I’m not alone in the Pendergast, Loughlin, and Flynn ladies’ room. The door to the last stall is closed.

I’m about to sneak away to give the person some privacy when I hear the noise again. It’s kind of a whimpering noise. Like a little kitten.

Or someone crying.

I duck down to see if I recognize the person’s shoes beneath the stall door. Instantly I realize I’m looking at the feet of Jill Higgins, New York’s current most famous bride-to-be. Because on those feet are a pair of Timberlands.

And nobody wears Timberlands to Pendergast, Loughlin, and Flynn but Jill.

Who is apparently taking a break in the bathroom to cry for a while before her next appointment with Chaz’s dad.

I know, as an employee of the firm, I should quietly leave the ladies’ room, and pretend like I never heard what I’m hearing.

But as a not-yet-certified wedding-gown specialist—and more important, a girl who knows what it’s like to be constantly ragged upon (as my sisters have ragged upon me for my entire existence)—I can’t just turn and walk away. Especially since I know—I just know —I can help her. I really can.

Which would explain why I walk over to the door of her stall and quietly tap on it—although I’ll admit, my heart was thumping. I really need this job, after all.

“Um… Miss Higgins?” I call through the stall door. “It’s me, Lizzie. The receptionist?”

“Oh… ”

I’ve never heard so much emotion piled into a single word. That “oh” is laden with fear—I guess about what I’m going to say or do, having caught John MacDowell’s fiancée weeping in the bathroom. Am I going to call the press? Pass her a box of Kleenex? Run and get Esther? What?—regret, self-loathing, embarrassment, and even what sounds like a healthy dose of mortification.

“It’s okay,” I say through the door. “I mean, I sometimes feel like crying in here myself. In fact, most days.”

This elicits a burble of laughter from the woman in the stall. But it’s a tearful burble.

“Do you want me to get you something?” I ask. “Like tissues? Or a diet Coke?” I don’t know why I thought she might want the latter. It’s just that a nice cold diet Coke always makes me feel better. Except hardly anyone ever offers me one.

“No-oo-oo,” Jill says in a tremulous voice. “I’m okay. I think. It’s just—”

And before I know it, she’s off—really crying this time, in big huge gasping baby sobs.

“Whoa,” I say. Because I know what it’s like to cry like that. I’ve been there. I’ve done that.

And I know there’s only one thing that ever makes me feel better when I’ve got that big a crying jag going on.

“Hang on,” I say to Jill through the stall door. “I’ll be right back.”

I run out of the bathroom. Then, so as to avoid Tiffany (who, after all, is probably wondering what happened to me. Especially since she doesn’t technically start work for half an hour, and I’ve left her sitting in my chair, answering all the calls that I should be picking up), I zip through the locked back door to the office (code to get in: 1-2-3), and hurry into the Pendergast, Loughlin, and Flynn kitchen.