“Now that it’s time to talk about it, I don’t know where to begin,” Erin said. “It’s been an awful day from start to finish.” She recounted to Julie how carefully she had dressed for the wedding. “I spent a whole hour on my makeup and hair alone. I wanted to knock his socks off. You know? But instead, he took one look at me and got as far away from me as he could.”

“Oh, sweetie. It may have seemed that way to you, but Wyatt isn’t normally rude. Maybe he was just—I don’t know—preoccupied.”

“He was preoccupied, all right. Thinking of ways to get away from me. Most of the time, I can just shrug it off. He’s been avoiding me for a while. But today . . . I don’t know. With all that happily-ever-after talk. Seeing the absolute joy on Uncle Slade’s and Vickie’s faces. Thinking about true love and wishing it could happen for me. Watching my cousin Brody, who didn’t even know Uncle Slade was his father a few months ago, standing beside his dad as his best man. It was all so perfect and romantic.”

“It really was,” Julie agreed. “And watching Brody and Slade together. Wow. They are so much alike, not only in looks, but in character and temperament as well. It’s sad to think of all the wasted years when they should have been father and son, but that only made today all the more meaningful and wondrous. It was about as perfect as a wedding can be.” Julie’s expression grew thoughtful as she swirled her wine and stared into its burgundy depths. “Watching all that made me feel sad, too. Attending weddings can do that to single women.” She took a sip of her drink and swallowed. “Did you know that single people who attend weddings tend to go off half-cocked and get married just to feel better?”

“Really?” Erin hadn’t been aware of that fact. “I can see it happening, though. If some guy proposed to me right now, I might say yes.”

“Me, too!” Julie exclaimed. “I’ve never loved someone the way Vickie clearly loves Slade, and I’d really like to experience that before I’m old and gray.”

“What about Derek? You said you loved him.”

“I thought so,” Julie mused aloud. “But as time passes to separate me from the pain of his betrayal, I realize that I was more in love with the whole idea of marriage and raising a family.” She shrugged. “Vickie and Slade have found the real thing.”

“I felt awful for envying them,” Erin confessed. “If any two people deserve to be together and happy for the rest of their lives, it’s Slade and Vickie. How selfish of me to feel sad for myself instead of being happy for them.”

Julie shook her head. “Stop! It wasn’t selfish of you, Erin. Today put me in a romantic frame of mind, too. How could it not? Who doesn’t wish for happily ever after?”