They circled the house and headed down toward the river, Angie asking questions and John ignoring them until they were almost to the bank. John flung himself down on the grass, and she followed him, ill at ease, reluctant. She looked toward the house. There was a light burning in Rivera’s window.

“You won’t believe it,” John said. “I still don’t believe it.”

“Try me.”

He was staring into the sky, bright with stars and a moon that was close to full. “The main points: Caroline called off the wedding. She’s resigning her faculty position and she’s leaving Ogilvie for good. All because she realized, at the age of thirty-five, that what she really wants is to be a chef.”

Angie sat very still, trying to string the words he had produced into something recognizable. “A chef?”

“She’s going to cooking school.”

“Oh.”

“My reaction pretty much exactly,” John said.

“So,” Angie said, “as far as anybody knows, this is all her decision and you’re—what? Deserted and heartbroken?”

He frowned. “I hadn’t thought about it that way, but yeah, I suppose that’s the way this will play.”

Angie didn’t need to ask how that sat with him, because it was clear he didn’t know himself. She could see him running the scenario through in his head. Would he mind, if all of Ogilvie thought Caroline Rose had dumped him? The answer to that, she was pretty sure, had to do with Caroline’s reasons. Or at least what people believed about her reasons.

John said. “You should have seen the look on Harriet’s face. If Caroline had announced she was a closet Hare Krishna and was moving to a commune in Siberia, I don’t think she could have been more shocked. I just came from a three-hour Rose family discussion that had to be heard to be believed.” He turned his head toward her abruptly.

“You spent a lot of time with Caroline in the last weeks. Did you have any inkling of this?”

“That Caroline wanted to give up everything to go to cooking school?” Angie shook her head. “Not the first clue. Did they try to talk her out of it?”

“Oh, yeah. Harriet and Pearl leading the charge, Eunice hanging back like the voice of reason she has always been, Caroline trying to make everybody happy and doing just the opposite.”

“And Miss Junie?”

He shrugged. “Miss Junie did what she always does. To anybody who doesn’t know how she works, it looks like she’s staying neutral. But believe me, if she wanted to put a stop to the discussion, she could do it. Harriet and Pearl will do her fighting for her, and the sad thing is, none of them really see that for what it is.”

“But the wedding is off?”