Celeste gulped her iced tea. She heard Manny thump down the stairs. He waved his phone at Lidia.

“I got a text from the power company. Apparently, the blackout is due to ‘animal contact.’ They’re estimating about an hour or so.”

“Well, Marco’s oysters can’t wait an hour, so you’d better get moving.”

Celeste’s heart beat faster. This was a sign. Even with the ring gone, there she was, in the middle of talking about the wedding, and the universe interrupted.

“I should get going,” she said.

“Don’t you want to finish—”

The conversation? No. She didn’t.

Gemma dealt with the bad news about the diamond ring the way she dealt with most things: She got to work. Celeste had given her the go-ahead to sell her pieces in the store, and now she needed to create a display.

“Try using this for the chains,” Jack said, setting up a Lucite “arm” he’d found in the back. “And then the charms can go on a tray in front.”

“Yeah, that could work,” Gemma said. She took a breath, telling herself to focus on the task in front of her. Still, her thoughts kept looping back to the Electric Rose. She didn’t believe Elodie’s explanation that the sale had been purely a business decision. It seemed like an act of spite—the same spite that made her aunt reject her. Maybe it even had something to do with why the family had cast her aside.

Suddenly, the lights went out. The fans stopped whirring. Jack’s phone pinged with a text.

“The power’s out,” he said. “Animal contact.”

“What does that mean?”

“Sometimes an osprey builds a nest near the power lines or something else and then we just have to wait for it to be fixed. It’s pretty routine this time of year.” He propped open the front doors and walked out back to get the generator going.

Gemma set her necklace chains on the arm, grouping them by metal: silver, gold-plated brass, and gold-plated silver. She put out two of each to leave room for the bracelets. Just a few minutes without the fans and already the shop was uncomfortably hot.

“Gemma. Hey.”

She turned to find Sanjay.

“What are you doing here?” she said.

“I got to town two days ago.”

She nodded, looking back at her necklaces. “Yes. I’m aware. I saw you at the parade. Both of you.” With her back to him, she put down the chain, took a breath, and said, “I don’t get it. Is bringing her here some kind of payback?”

“What? No. I came to take more photographs. You mentioning me in the Times . . . I appreciate it. I really do. And I wanted to say hi to you before I leave tomorrow.”

She turned around.

“Okay, well—hi. Is that it?”

“Gemma, don’t be like that. We agreed to be friends, right?”

Friends. Right.