In the wee hours of the morning—after a too-short nap in the hay—we’d unveiled the new installation to a small crowd, coffees in hand as they waited on the sidewalk. Every week was a little bigger, a little grander, and today was no exception.

It was a surprise to us all. But nowhere near as surprising as who I found on the other side of the counter.

Wendy Westham had always been beautiful, and time had not changed that. In fact, I thought time had made her more beautiful. The roundness of youth had been erased from her face, leaving high cheekbones and a perfectly shaped jaw. Her eyes were more confident than I remembered, more grounded, though still bright with that spark of mischief I so often saw in Luke’s. Those eyes were nearly the same color as his, a deep, shocking blue.

If their marriage had yielded a baby, that baby would have had those eyes, clever and ocean deep.

Pain split my ribs as a smile split my face. “Wendy!” I cheered, the sound too light to be genuine. “What … what are you doing here?”

She smiled a smile that belonged on a magazine cover, a smile as perfect and practiced as it was charming and true. “Tess, right? God, it’s good to see you. The shop looks incredible. I heard you did the windows, is that true? Because you could get a job in LA like that.” She snapped her fingers.

I laughed, wooden and stiff. “I did, thank you. So … can I help you?”

“Oh!” she said on a laugh, adjusting her handbag, which was hooked in the crook of her arm and cost more than a month’s rent on Fifth. “I was looking for Luke. Is he here?”

I swallowed the stone in my throat. “You just missed him. He’s on a delivery.”

Her face fell. “Oh. Do you mind if I wait for him? I’ve been back in New York for a minute, but I haven’t had a chance to see him yet.”

With a nod—seriously, what else could I do?—I said, “Yes, of course, though I don’t know when he’ll be back.”

She waved a hand, stepping around the counter to head to the back before I could object. She wore a dress, simple and bohemian in design but colored with little details—a tie here, a ruffle there, clever design that made it feel almost couture. Her beauty was as blinding as it was understated. She didn’t have to try. She just was.

I didn’t know Wendy well—she and Luke had met well after we graduated, and they’d only dated for forty-two seconds before running off to get married. But they’d been a singular unit, inseparable from the second they met. Whenever Luke had come by the shop, Wendy had been at his side. She’d never been unkind to me, though everyone painted her to be a succubus. Everyone just loved Luke too much to accept anything but five-star treatment of him. Anything less was blasphemy.