Kelly had her head down to hide the tears that were starting. Her life had been so planned out. Then Pauly said he didn’t want to play his part and it had all crashed. “Mom isn’t speaking to me,” she whispered. “And Forey...”

“Ah,” Vera said. “Now here’s where I come in handy. Want me to jerk a knot in their tails? Bawl them out and make them happy again?”

Kelly started to say no, but she looked at her sister. “Would you? Please?”

“Love to! Give me ten minutes with them and I’ll have them baking your wedding cake.” Vera went to the door.

“Wait!” Kelly said. “When you and Adam get married, what kind of cake do you want?”

“Married? What an outdated concept. I think we’ll just fly away together.”

“But what about Adam? What does he want?”

Vera shrugged. “We’ve never talked about it, but I’m sure he agrees with me. You just rest and I’ll take care of Mom.”

“Thank you,” Kelly said.

Three days later, Kelly was hiding in her room. Too much and too little, she thought.

At work, Dr. Carl’s silence was too little. Oh! But she missed going to school. This summer was all hands-on casework. Her adviser visited every other week and got a report of what was being done. Kelly wondered what Dr. Carl would tell the man. “She’s going to marry my stepson, so she deserves to fail.”

Kelly knew that if she were Vera she’d confront Dr. Carl and ask what he was thinking. Instead, she had cowardly mumbled, “Are you okay?”

He had snapped, “Of course!” then walked away. If it hadn’t been for the arrival of an alpaca, Kelly would have been miserable. She nuzzled the soft fur of the sweet animal’s neck and told herself it would all be okay.

At home, it was worse. Vera had laid into her mother and Forey so hard that they’d gone the other way. Vera had told them they were selfish, thinking only of themselves. She said poor Kelly was facing a whole summer without the man she loved and having to plan a spectacularly beautiful fall wedding all by herself because they were angry that snoopy, gossiping Mrs. Carl had been told by her son first. Vera had made the women dissolve in apologies.

Kelly heard them through her bedroom door, and if she didn’t know it was all a lie, she would have laughed.

Since then, her mother and Forey had launched into jet power. The moon landing had less planning than what was being done for Kelly’s wedding.

Now, Saturday morning, she was in her bedroom, textbook open and unread, when Vera knocked and opened the door. She tossed a magazine on the bed. Brides. “Are they including you in any of what they’re planning to do?”