Natalie thought about her mother, who had somehow managed to deal with financial struggles without collapsing utterly. Tess and her half sister, Isabel, had grown up without their father, who had gone missing before they were born.

Natalie, on the other hand, knew exactly where her father was. Though Blythe was fond of saying that life had given her everything she wanted, Natalie sometimes wondered if that was really true. Blythe was a bundle of contradictions. She would take any risk in business, but never with her heart.

“If you keep rescuing your coworker,” Tess went on, “she’ll never figure things out on her own. You’d be surprised by how much you can learn from failure.”

“It’s the gift that keeps on giving,” Natalie remarked.

“See, my point is, you’re not doing her any favors by constantly mopping up behind her. Saving a person takes away her power to learn and move forward.”

“How’d you get so smart about these things?” Natalie asked. “Pregnancy hormones?”

“Right.” Tess chuckled.

Natalie reminded herself to savor the deep, rich wine and the glorious colors of the gathering sunset. She had a good life. A good job. A good friend. “I have to say, you’re better than therapy. It’s been a crappy day. Not just work and my mom being a no-show.” She sighed again. “I don’t think Rick and I are going to make it.”

“You and Rick? You seem so great together. What happened?” asked Tess.

“Well, that’s part of the problem. Nothing really happened. Nothing at all. He’s a perfectly nice guy and—outside of work, I suppose—I’m a perfectly nice person. We’re compatible, but … I’m not sure compatible is enough. We’ve been together for almost a year, and things haven’t really progressed.”

“Oh, man. Do you want them to progress?”

Natalie gazed out at the sweeping landscape, vineyards and orchards, endless bounty. Rick sometimes took her flying to enjoy the scenery, and she loved it. She wanted to be able to say she loved him. “I want to be crazy about him. I should be crazy about him. He’s great-looking. Successful. Good enough in bed. Has a nice family down in Petaluma.”

“And yet …”

“Exactly. There’s a yet.” She studied the horizon, a gently undulating sine wave where the hills met the sky. “I wish there weren’t. I wish I could feel all in.” It was true. She craved some heady mixture of passion and certainty and excitement that didn’t feel threatening or risky.

Maybe that was the point, though. Maybe the very nature of excitement was risk.

In that case, she could do without the excitement. “Mom says I’m too closed off to intimacy,” she confessed. “She would know, of course. She’s been single all her life. And she claims she’s happy. So why does she think I need someone? Can’t I be happy too?”