“Well, that’s how it feels. And yes, my father pays my tuition, but aside from that, I have no intention of taking money from them—or help in any way. Do you understand that?”

She went home to her own apartment that night, wanting time to cool off. And never heard from Brodie Muir again.

If that had been the end of it—the drama with the Electric Rose—she maybe could have chalked it up to one random bad experience. But then, Paulina’s engagement. Paulina’s death. And the tabloids starting up with the Pavlin curse. Like several other accounts of extraordinary diamonds bringing misfortune—the Hope Diamond, the Black Orlov—the Electric Rose became tarnished with tragedy.

She couldn’t talk to Jack about this; he didn’t understand her interest in tarot cards and belief in the zodiac. The last thing he would give credence to was her feeling, her deep-seated certainty, that she and her sisters were under a dark cloud of bad luck, and that getting engaged would be tempting fate.

The sun beat down on her face, and she used it as an excuse to close her eyes. Don’t blow it, she told herself. The past is the past.

“So, my dear . . . whadya say?” he said.

She opened her eyes, ignoring the glare, focusing on the face that she loved so much.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, Jack, I’ll marry you.”

29

And I thought New York had the best people-watching,” Gemma said.

Spindler’s restaurant was located on the East End and had a front deck, rear garden seating, and an upper level with water views where Alvie chose to sit. Gemma looked down at the colorful tide of people roaming Commercial Street. Cars were at a crawl; on the nearest corner, a man in a top hat belted out Frank Sinatra with a karaoke machine. Families with small children carried bags from Cabot’s Candy, and drag queens handed out flyers for that evening’s shows.

“My girlfriend says New York hasn’t been interesting since the eighties,” Alvie said from across the table.

Their drinks had barely arrived and she’d already mentioned Maud, her much older girlfriend, repeatedly.

“So you don’t have any hesitation about quitting the store to work with your girlfriend? I mean, not everyone can work together,” Gemma said with a twist in her gut. After hearing from him earlier, she realized how much she missed Sanjay. Worse, she couldn’t even tell him how she felt. That definitely would fall outside of the careful friend zone they’d established.

“Celeste and Jack don’t seem to have a problem,” Alvie said.

That was true. And there were probably countless other examples. Not everyone messed things up as spectacularly as Gemma had. There were moments when she was tempted to wonder if the Pavlin “curse” was actually a thing. She raised her margarita glass and a dusting of salt fell to the table.