“That’s ridiculous.”

“No it isn’t.”

“Yes it is.”

“No. It isn’t.”

“Elise, please.”

“Elise please what? ‘Elise please lay off so my ex-fiancée can continue to try to “connect” with me without you interfering?’ ‘Elise please lay off so I can concentrate on the emotional needs of my ex-fiancée at the expense of the emotional needs of my current fiancée?’ ‘Elise please lay off because—’ ”

“You mean everything to me and she means nothing?”

Silenced, I stopped, hands on hips. “Nice try.”

“It’s the truth.”

“Then prove it.”

“How?”

“Change our phone number.”

So acute became my insecurity that anyone hearing about it would have assumed that she was the bride-to-be whom I, the scorned ex-fiancée, was trying to depose. Which wasn’t how it was at all, of course.

I was the reigning incumbent.

I was the one picking out invitations and caterers and table settings and wedding dresses.

I was the one winning.

Whatever that meant.

But that’s what everyone (my married friends, my single friends, even my divorced friends) was telling me:

That I’d found the Holy Grail.

A straight, attractive, unambivalent man who loved me and wanted to marry me.

Who cared if I would never be allowed to complain about my life ever again?

And yet I was the one who began behaving like a lunatic.

I was the one who started going through Donald’s wallet, pants pockets, shirt pockets, coat pockets, bureau drawers, desk drawers, briefcase, date book, piles of receipts, old files, boxes of correspondence, photo albums, glove compartment, trunk.

I was the one eavesdropping on his phone calls, gaining access to his access codes and passwords, then checking his voicemail messages and email messages.

I was the one sitting up in bed at night, staring at Donald’s face as he slept, peacefully, checking for traces (a telltale twitch, a furrowed brow, restless tossing and turning) of infidelity, guilt, second thoughts.

And this was all while Adrienne was still in transit.

By the time she actually moved to Washington, things would get progressively worse.

I would, on occasion (like, every day), chicken-call her house and her office from pay phones around town (to safeguard against the possibility that she, too, had Caller ID).

I would, on occasion (like, once, or twice, or three times a day), drive by her rented house en route to or from the Safeway, the bookstore, the caterer, the florist, the dress alterer, the videographer, the Justice of the Peace, the wedding site at Dumbarton Oaks.

What was I hoping to unearth when I performed these ritualistic obsessive-compulsive pay-phone chicken calls, and these drive-bys, with my sunglasses on, the visor down, and my Burberry scarf wrapped around my face?

Something. Anything. Everything.

I was checking to see if she was there.

If she was home.

If her lights were on.

Which lights were on (Kitchen? Living room? Bedroom? Or a combination?).

If her car (a midnight-blue convertible two-seater Porsche Boxster) was parked there.

If anyone else’s car (Donald’s 1997 black BMW 740IS, perhaps ) was parked there, too.