He nodded. “Pretty quick, looks like.”

“Just in time.”

She was looking at him. He raised his head slowly and met her gaze. “Caroline asked you to videotape the wedding.”

“Harriet did. She said you had been dead-set against the idea but finally gave in. I expect that was the fallout from my indiscreet morning visit.”

That was pretty close to the truth, though John neither wanted to admit it or to fill her in on the details. There was no better way to convince the Rose girls that he had no interest in Angie than to invite her to his wedding, and at the same time to give in on the video question. It had been a tactical decision on his part and it had worked well enough to put a crimp in Patty-Cake’s plans to launch a major Angie-based offensive. The look of satisfaction on Patty-Cake’s face was a relief and an irritation at the same time, even a week later.

Angie said, “Caroline and I don’t talk about you, if you’re worried we sit around comparing notes.”

He studied the bowl of his spoon and the hard crescent of reflected light in its rim. There was nothing he could say that would make this situation right, no explanation, no rationalization that would fix things, and maybe it was good that he had come here tonight, if only because he might not have faced that fact if he hadn’t. On the other hand, he was having trouble reading Angie’s expression—nothing new there, he had made a career, it seemed, out of misreading her—and he was suddenly too weary to try. He said, “I thought you wanted to talk about Miss Zula.”

Angie’s eyes fluttered closed, and then opened. “I did. I do. But not now. It’s been a really long day.”

John felt a shiver of irritation slide up his spine. “We keep dancing around the things we need to talk about. Why is that?”

She leaned back and folded her arms, narrowed her eyes at him. “Okay,” she said, “if you insist, I’ll lay it out. You’re getting married in a week. To Caroline Rose, who is a far better match for you than I ever was or could be. I wish you both every happiness, and a perfect life.”

Now when she looked at him, full on, unapologetic, wanting something—but what?—there was a tic at the corner of her mouth. It took everything in John not to reach out and still it with his finger.

He said, “Maybe perfection is overrated after all.”

She stood up so suddenly that the chair tipped over and crashed to the floor, and there she was, in a temper. He was asking himself what he meant by pushing her so far, what he meant to accomplish, what he really wanted, when the doorbell rang in a long shrill.