Her dream, anyway.

Meg had planned her life in careful steps, from a sensible major—business—to a practical career as a loan officer at the bank. Managing risk. She was good at that. She dated John for a year before they got engaged and produced two adorable children only a little ahead of schedule.

I waited for her to tell me again about her handsome husband, her fantastically satisfying life, her yard.

“Guess who’s coming to Thanksgiving dinner?” she asked.

I blinked at the change of subject. “Um . . . Aunt Phee?”

Our great-aunt Josephine spent most holidays with our family. No one else would have the old bat.

“Who else,” Meg said.

“Mr. Laurence.” Our next-door neighbor.

“Both the Laurences,” Meg said. “Trey’s home.”

My wine sloshed. I set the glass down hastily. “I thought he was in Italy. Driving Maseratis or something for his grandfather.”

Theodore Laurence III—Trey—was old Mr. Laurence’s grandson. We’d practically grown up together. I hadn’t seen him since July, when he had a layover at JFK on his way to Florence. We’d fought—again—both of us too stubborn to change our minds and too proud to apologize.

“Ferraris. He got back last week,” Meg said. “He was asking about you, John said.”

Trey was John’s boss at the Laurences’ car dealership. I was vague on the details. “I hope John told him I was great.”

“Well, of course.” A pause, while I listened to a jackhammer across the street. “Trey didn’t know you’d left the newspaper.”

Sweet Meg. She made it sound as if my being let go was my decision.

“We kind of lost touch over the summer,” I said.

He’d stopped following me on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Snapchat, and Pinterest. We were still friends, though. His face showed up occasionally in my various newsfeeds, usually tagged in a photo by some unknown Ashley or Jennifer. I told myself that was a good sign he was over me.

“So, do you think you two will ever get back together?” Meg asked.

“There is no together,” I said. “We never were together.”

Which wasn’t, strictly speaking, true. Trey was my buddy, my oldest pal and coconspirator, one of the few friends I’d kept in touch with after high school.

But when I left for New York, Trey, instead of being happy for me, had sulked for months.

“You’re not seeing anybody else,” Meg said.

I took a deep breath. My sister only wanted me to be happy. In her world, as in Shakespeare’s comedies, marriage was the restoration of the social order. I couldn’t get her to see that my staying single was not a tragedy.

I went out a lot—to keep an eye on the competition, to gather grist for the blog mill, to indulge in the usual late-night, postshift rituals of kitchen workers everywhere. But I didn’t date. Nobody outside the restaurant industry understood the insane, pressure cooker hours, the nights-and-weekends schedule. And dating someone on the inside . . . Well, aside from the drama, I didn’t want to risk writing, even anonymously, about someone I’d had sex with.