“And Holly.”

“Neither will she,” Erin said, and they both smiled, happy to have each other to get the joke.

“Thanks for this,” Zanne said, carrying the dress down the hall, out the side door, and along the path to the cottages with both hands.

Something fluttered under the surface of Zanne’s thoughts, like a stingray settling under the ocean floor. Ted had already offered her the job. Why would they post an ad for an opening that they were filling internally? She hadn’t accepted the job offer yet—maybe that was the reason? It was sensible to cover their bases in case she said no. But Ted must have known she was going to accept. On what planet would she say no to that much money? If she was here today making less, of course she’d be here tomorrow making more. Did he have doubts about her abilities? Was his offer provisional upon her proving herself superior to external candidates? But what outsider could ever understand Ted better than she did? For eight years, she’d been watching his every move, thinking the way he thought, committing his likes and dislikes to memory. He liked Dolly Parton, not Kenny Rogers; vanilla cupcakes with chocolate frosting but not the other way around; college basketball but only the playoffs. He hated beets, laces, transitional lenses, down pillows, aisle seats, convertibles, hair spray, and Elvis. He told everyone his favorite movie was Cinema Paradiso but his actual favorite was Jaws. His greatest fear was his own irrelevance. What MBA would ever be able to mind meld with Ted the way Zanne had? Sometimes, she thought she knew him better than his own family did.

She’d cringed when Holly had invited Ted to go to the beach with her for lunch—not just because her timing was poor and he’d refused, but because he had no interest in hot, crowded beaches. Shady rivers were Ted’s happy place, didn’t Holly know that? That’s why he’d moved that photo of himself to the shelf right behind his desk, giving it pride of place next to the galaxyfinder. Zanne had assumed it was Holly who took the picture, Holly who Ted was laughing with that day at the river. That was why Zanne had originally saved the photograph, framed it, and put it on the bragging bookcase across the room, with the other family photos. But had he gone to the river that day with somebody else? He was much younger in the photograph than he was now, no gray in his hair, a brightness in his eyes, full of promise. She remembered now that there were words on the back of the photograph. Ted was still in the screening room. She could go in his office and check. In and out in under a minute.