The truth was quite simple, if she could only make the words come out of her mouth: she wanted John, she had always wanted him, and he wanted her, too. The connection had stretched over five years and many miles, but it hadn’t snapped. It was still strong enough to draw them together, against everyone’s wishes and expectations and maybe even against their own best interests. But there was no going back now, no way to pretend the conversation in the emergency room hadn’t happened.

She was hoping that she would be able to say even part of this to Rivera, enough to make her understand that she knew what she was doing, but now Rivera had something to say.

“John isn’t right for Caroline.”

That was enough to jolt Angie out of her preoccupation with herself. She looked hard at Rivera and saw an expression there that, she realized now, must be a great deal like the look on her own face. Desperately hopeful, lovesick, pessimistic that anything so crucially important could possibly go right. The signs had been there, but Angie, caught up in her own mess, hadn’t taken them in. Rivera was in love with Caroline Rose. Suddenly Angie found herself in the middle of a minefield.

“So,” she said slowly, “what are you trying to tell me?”

“There’s nothing to say,” Rivera said, very clearly. “Not a thing.”

A hundred questions flooded Angie’s mind, but none of them could be asked outright; she could no more force a confidence from Rivera than she could stab her. And still she couldn’t let things go as they stood.

She said, “What does Caroline want, do you know?”

Rivera made a face. “I’m not sure she knows what she wants. The only thing she seems clear on is her prime directive. Which is, not to disappoint her mother or sisters.”

Angie’s mouth closed with an audible click. “She’ll go ahead with the wedding no matter—”

“Listen,” Rivera interrupted her, “I am not going to discuss this, okay? I can’t. Even for you.” She looked at her watch and pulled herself, groaning, up off the floor. “Mangiamele, up and at ’em. Miss Maddie and the picnic baskets await.”

Angie looked around the mess on the kitchen floor and felt suddenly deflated. She said out loud what she had been thinking for so many weeks. “I knew we shouldn’t have taken this job.”

Rivera said, “I’m starting to think you were right.”