“Steaming milk now,” Alexa called over her shoulder to the couple in her pan-Euro accent, an asset in a town like Montecito, a Pacific Coast gem with European aspirations. The Positano of California. Over her decades as a resident of the hamlet, she’d used her background as part of her brand, working with clients to plan their dream vacations in the Greek isles or the Amalfi Coast. Her gentle Mediterranean lilt informed by a British university education had served her well in this sophisticated beach town. So had her hustle. It’s why she needed her coffee. Steam, press, pour, foam, layer. Perfect.

Turning with cup in hand, Alexa positioned herself at the marble-topped island, a spot she knew had great morning lighting that blew out her wrinkles on camera. “Now I’m human. Tell me your news!”

Penny, lovely Penny, who with her olive skin and green eyes didn’t need good lighting to look stunning. She’d been blessed with favorable genetics and a strong sense of self that shaped her style. Even on a Sunday morning, she looked pulled together, polished, in a white linen shirt, small gold earrings and necklace, and her hair swept up in a messy bun. A swipe of color popped her smile. No filter needed. The couple appeared to be huddled together on Penny’s couch in her Upper East Side apartment. Alexa recognized the art on the wall, the work of a painter on Patmos, her own birthplace and the island where Penny spent most of her summers. The slashes of blue and pink in the painting brought a little bit of the Dodecanese to Manhattan. It soothed Alexa.

“Are you sitting down?” Penny asked dramatically as she held up her left hand. “We’re engaged! Isn’t it gorgeous?” She thrust her ring into the camera. It was a stunning light-blue square-cut gem surrounded by baguettes of a light-pink stone. Sparkly and special, like her daughter. Like the painting. But Alexa refused to get weepy. Or swept away. She stayed as pragmatic as ever. “Is that an aquamarine?”

“Yes, three carats with tourmaline baguettes. No blood diamonds for us,” Chase said, looking satisfied and proud of both the rock and his newly acquired vocabulary. “The mayor knows a guy.”

“Chase picked it out all by himself!” Penny said, as if this act alone made him marriage worthy. But did it? He had failed, Alexa noted to herself, to inform her of the proposal. It wasn’t as if she expected him to ask for Penny’s hand in marriage like it was the Middle Ages. And she didn’t want to react like her own Greek father might have at the slight, with a torrent of patriarchal language and a curse on Chase’s family. But some sort of advance notice would have been appreciated. She would cope with that slight later.