“If on his feet with the ability to scoop rocky road was the criterion to get a wedding invite, then we have an issue here. Anyway, we went over the list multiple times, and Mr. Sanders wasn’t on it.”

Her mother had the grace to blush. “He was a last-minute addition.”

“Seriously? Mom, I’ve told you so many times, I don’t want a big wedding.”

Joey’s dad glanced up from a pile of mail. He’d come home from work especially for “lunch with his girls” and was wearing his yellow-checked button-down that Joey privately thought lent his skin a touch of jaundice. Her father now used his brass letter opener to carefully swipe open a hot-pink envelope that looked very clearly to Joey to be junk.

“Dad, why are you opening that? Just toss it.”

“You never know what’s important. And sweetheart, your mom just has a soft spot for Abe. I do too, really. He has a heart of gold.” Her father unleashed a paper and with excruciating care unfolded it, studied it, and turned it to Joey. “Twenty percent off slippers. Do you need slippers?”

“I don’t need slippers!” Joey started at her father’s pained expression, but she couldn’t help but be on edge. This lunch seemed absolutely farcical—planning a wedding with her mother and her up-in-the-air groom to boot.

“Joey, we already invited Mr. Sanders,” Bea said. “We can’t rescind his invitation. Anyway, you gave me full creative control—”

“I don’t remember that.”

“I do. You said something like, I don’t care who you invite, just please stop calling me about anything wedding-related. Does that ring a bell?”

Unfortunately, it did. That was likely on her mother’s thirtieth phone call about the guest list. For not the first time, Joey wondered why she and Grant hadn’t eloped, why she’d consented to this supposedly small wedding that now included the old ice cream scooper/magician of her childhood?

She knew why. Grant wanted a real wedding. He’d said, When you find something good, you max out the celebrations.

“Okay.” Joey exhaled deeply.

“This is a lot of work for me, Joey. You could show a little appreciation.”

Joey gave her mother an incredulous stare.

Her mother smiled weakly. “I’m happy to do it! Overjoyed to plan your wedding, JoJo. But it’s a lot. Like, just the other night, I was giving a one-off talk on the commercial exchange of sexuality in modern art as viewed through the lens of Olympia and A Bar at the Folies-Bergère by Manet, fascinating stuff. And instead of really getting into the moment with the barmaid’s expression, instead of taking this…this…journey with my students…do you know what I was thinking? Whether we should have gone with the lighter tablecloths.”

“Huh?”