I rested my head against his chest; closed my eyes for a few brief seconds. His heart beat beneath his sweater, slowly, steadily into my ear. At that particular moment, there was something oddly comforting about the question. It was familiar; intimate; the fact that he’d asked it implied that everything between us was still certain, that nothing had changed.

We shut the lights off and climbed the stairs in the dark, leaving the kitchen’s mess until morning. Yet as we did, I could almost feel a change in air pressure:

Those Evil Twins; that old Gloom and Doom—they were all back, lurking in the shadows again.

Chapter 16

16

That Monday morning, after Adrienne had gone back to New York and Donald back to school, everything should have returned to normal. Only it didn’t. Sitting motionless at the kitchen table, I tried to take Gayle’s advice and start focusing on my life with Donald again.

Not on his past life with Adrienne. Or our upcoming future with her here. But it wasn’t easy.

Having wasted so much time preparing for and enduring Adrienne’s first visit, and having wasted so much money, too—the French beauty treatments alone were enough to set me back several thousand francs, not to mention that sweater—I was now very behind on our wedding plans. Yet the thought of trying to play catch-up seemed beyond me. I felt as if a bomb had gone off in my backyard over the weekend. How was I supposed to think of stupid flower arrangements at a time like this?

I drank cup after cup of coffee and ate countless miniature Reese’s cups from Donald’s secret stash; replayed scenes from the weekend; assessed the damage. All the while wondering: Whose idea was it to have a wedding in the first place?

Not mine, in fact.

I thought back.

Donald had proposed to me one night last July in the living room after a perfect dinner (he always got especially romantic following a fabulous—and fabulously expensive—meal) down the street at Palena. We’d each had the three-course tasting menu: house-cured smoked salmon topped with chopped greens and hazelnuts to start; veal chop with paprika sauce; chocolate mousse and French-pressed coffee for dessert—a selection Donald recently said he wished we could replicate for the reception. Down on both knees—he was so tall otherwise, and balancing on one knee was far too complicated for him at a moment like that, he’d told me later—holding out that beautiful Tiffany-blue box with the perfect little midnight-blue velvet box inside, to my shock and amazement, he’d asked.

I’d said yes.

Joyous, disbelieving, his eyes filled with tears.