Realizing she was truly on her own with this, she gazed out the car window. While Rick had been plotting a surprise proposal and a romantic getaway, she had been contemplating the most civil, low-key way to break up with him. The very moment he’d been flying with her mother, a gorgeous engagement ring tucked into his vest, Natalie had been imagining life without him.

She kept expecting him to be the first to call it quits. Instead, he was buying a diamond ring, secretly plotting a marriage proposal and a whisk-you-away couple’s weekend. Marriage.

It would have been a surprise, all right. In the most terrible way. How could she have read the situation so wrong?

Attending his memorial had been painful and teeth-grittingly awkward. His family was made up of very nice people who had assumed Natalie, too, was very nice. She wasn’t nice. Couldn’t they see that? She felt especially not-nice when Mandy appeared at the service, her expressions of sympathy as hollow as Natalie’s heart.

His sister had handed her the ring box. “He loved you so much. He would have wanted you to have this.”

Natalie hadn’t dared to touch the ring, nestled on its bed of velvet. “Please. I couldn’t.”

“I realize you’re emotional now. You’re not thinking straight.” Rhonda had dropped the box into Natalie’s purse. “You don’t ever have to wear it. Or you could repurpose it, maybe have it made into something else. Or sell it and use the proceeds for something you care about. Rick would’ve liked that.”

“It doesn’t seem right,” Natalie had said.

“Nothing about this whole situation seems right.” Rhonda’s voice caught on a sob and she gave Natalie a brief hug. “I’m sorry we never got the chance to be sisters.”

Natalie felt like a monster.

She was a monster.

The town car drew up at the mansion, a sumptuous crown atop a hill overlooking majestic views of the Bay Area—the bay itself, the Golden Gate Bridge, and the hills of Marin County.

“This building has a romantic story,” Grandy said, seeming to snap out of his silence. “After the great earthquake, Maud Flood was so afraid of fire that her husband built her a grand house of marble atop this granite hill. He wanted to give her a new place made entirely of stone, so she would feel safe.”

“Now that,” Natalie said, “is a good husband.” Rick would have made a good husband, she thought, immersing herself again in guilt. He had been caring, and cautious, and he knew how to look after things. He was steady and stable, her two favorite qualities not only in people but in life itself.