“Who told you that?” Noelle asked, although the answer was obvious. “And he didn’t leave me at the altar.” Just being accurate, she told herself. I’m not defending him.

“Mom told me ’cause she wants me to keep away from those Suttons. When I asked her why, she said you learned your lesson the hard way. She said a Sutton broke your heart and jilted you.”

“There’s more to it than that,” Kristen told her.

“I want to know everything,” Carley pleaded. “How can I hate them if I don’t know what they did that was so awful?”

“You shouldn’t hate anyone.”

“I don’t, not really, but if our family doesn’t like their family, then I should know why.”

“It’s a long story.”

Carley sat back on her heels. “That’s what Mom said.”

“God help me,” Kristen murmured, covering her eyes with one hand. “Don’t tell me I already sound like Mom. I didn’t think this would happen until I turned thirty.”

Noelle laughed, although she wasn’t sure how funny it was, since she herself was only days from her twenty-ninth birthday.

“Did you love him terribly?” Carley asked with a faraway look in her eyes.

Noelle wasn’t sure how to respond. She felt a distant and remembered pain but refused to let it take hold. “I thought I did.”

“It was wildly romantic,” Kristen added. “They were madly in love, but then they had a falling-out—”

“That’s one way to put it,” Noelle said, interrupting her sister. Thom had apparently fallen out of love with her. He’d certainly fallen out of their plans to elope.

“This is all so sad,” Carley said with an exaggerated sigh.

“Our parents not getting along is what started this in the first place.”

“At least you and Thom didn’t kill yourselves, like Romeo and Juliet—”

“No.” Noelle shook her head. “I’ve always been the sane, sensible sister. Remember?” But even as she spoke, she recognized her words for the lie they were. Staying away for ten years was a pretty extreme and hardly “sensible” reaction. Even she knew that. The fact was, though, something that had begun as a protest had simply become habit.

“Oh, sure,” Kristen teased. “Very sensible. You work too hard, you don’t date nearly enough and you avoid Rose as though we’ve got an epidemic of the plague.”

“Guilty, guilty, not guilty.” She wasn’t purposely avoiding Rose, she told herself, at least not anymore and not to the extent that Kristen implied. Noelle’s job was demanding and it was difficult to take off four or five days in a row.

“I’ve never met Thom, and already I don’t like him,” Carley announced. “Anyone who broke your heart is a dweeb. Besides, if he married you the way he said he would, you’d be living in Rose now and I could see you anytime I wanted.”