“I was just in there peeking around, we’re not sure when the wedding is going to be yet,” I say lightly, and her shoulders loosen a little.

“Are y’all doing something big?” she asks. “Lots of family?”

Until that moment, it hadn’t really hit me what a wedding with Eddie would look like. I’d been so caught up in the idea of marrying him, of being Mrs. Rochester, that I’d basically skipped the wedding part of things.

But now it’s all I can see, a giant church, Eddie’s side of the church full, his family from Maine all turning up, mine completely empty except for John Rivers sitting there, eating a bowl of cereal.

The image is so grotesque and awful that I literally shake my head to will it away, which apparently looks like an answer to Emily.

“Small, then!” she says, smiling. “I love it. Classy, elegant. Appropriate.”

Eyes on my hand again, and this time, I do rearrange my bags so that they’re covering the ring, and I give her my best bland smile, the one I actually learned from her and Campbell and Caroline McLaren. “Exactly,” I say, all sugar, then I gesture back up the road. “Anyway, I have more errands to run, so—”

“Oh, sure,” Emily says, waving a hand. Her own engagement ring is a princess-cut diamond, at least three carats, and it sparkles in the sunlight. “And my lips are sealed!”

“They don’t have to be,” I reply with a little shrug. “It’s not a secret.”

The truth is, I want her to spread this news like wildfire, I want everyone in Thornfield Estates to be talking about it by dinner.

We make vague plans to get coffee one of these days, and then go our separate ways, Emily already texting on her phone. By the next Neighborhood Beautification Committee meeting, everyone will know, and I’ll be the center of attention.

On the way home, I decide to stop at the Whole Foods and pick up some groceries. I haven’t cooked a single meal for Eddie since we’ve met, and that might be nice. It’s a pretty late spring day, and we could go full suburban basics and grill out.

The idea makes me smile as I turn into the parking lot.

The store is soothing, all wide aisles and calming Muzak, a world away from the Piggly Wiggly where I used to shop.

I push the cart down the aisle, wondering if Eddie would notice if I picked up some junk food. I love the fancy shit as much as the next girl, but truth be told, I’m getting a little sick of it. The other day, I found myself longing for macaroni and cheese—not the Annie’s Organics kind, not even the frozen kind that’s halfway decent, but the blue cardboard box kind that costs a dollar.

Snorting, I turn down another aisle. Who am I kidding? This is a nice grocery store, not the Pig. So instead, I stare at the fifty varieties of hummus and olive tapenades, wondering if I should also make a gas station run on my way home. Maybe they’d have macaroni and cheese there?

“Fancy meeting you here.”

I recognize the voice without turning around.

Tripp Ingraham stands behind me in a polo shirt and khaki shorts, a basket slung over his forearm.

A quick peek inside reveals cans of craft beer and a bunch of frozen but ostensibly healthy meals.

Tripp looks a little better than he did the last time I saw him. He’s still bloated, the pink polo stretching over a disturbingly round and smooth belly, but his face isn’t as puffy, and his eyes aren’t red. He’s even brushed his hair.

Maybe he’s managed to make it all the way to noon without a drink.

Smiling tightly, I give a little wave. “Hi, Mr. Ing—Tripp.”

One corner of his mouth lifts, half attempted smile, half smirk. “That’s right, you don’t work for me anymore,” he says, then adds, “and I hear congratulations are in order.”

Jesus, Emily worked even faster than I thought.

“Thank you,” I say. “We’re very happy. Anyway, it was nice to see you—”

I move to scoot past him, but he’s still standing there in the middle of the aisle, and even though it would be deeply satisfying to clip Tripp Ingraham with my cart, I stop, raising my eyebrows at him.

“So, when exactly did all this happen?” he asks, waving his free hand. “You and Eddie? Because I gotta say, I never saw that one coming.”

“Neither did we,” I say, still smiling, remembering that I need to be the girl Tripp thinks I am, the innocent barely-out-of-college dog-walker who made good. I wonder when I’ll feel like I can drop that act, when it will feel normal to just … be me.

“You know, I never got the whole Eddie ‘thing.’”

He actually raises his hands to make air quotes, the basket dangling heavily from the crook of his elbow.

I don’t bother asking him what he means because for one, he clearly wants me to ask him that, and for another, I just want to leave, but a little thing like lack of interest has clearly never stopped Tripp Ingraham where a woman is concerned.

“I mean, he’s good-looking, I guess, and he’s charming in that used-car-salesman way, but Jesus, from the way the women in this neighborhood acted, you would’ve thought the dude had a twelve-inch cock.”

Okay, maybe I misjudged how not-drunk Tripp actually is.

But this is good—now he’s given me every reason to push my cart past him, head held high, like I’m mortally offended and embarrassed instead of just kind of irritated.

He steps aside right before my cart actually hits him, and as I reach the end of the aisle, he calls after me, “Just hope you don’t like boats.”

When I glance back at him, his expression is curdled and nasty. “Women have bad luck around Eddie Rochester and boats,” he adds, before turning and trudging away.

I get all the way back to the produce before I abandon my semi-full cart and head for the doors.

The drive home isn’t long enough for me to shake the unease, the sudden fear that Tripp Ingraham—fucking Tripp Ingraham, of all people—has instilled in me, and again, I see Bea pale and greenish under the water. My stomach lurches as I pull into the driveway.

“Stop it, stop it, stop it,” I mutter, my hands over my face. Eddie’s wife drowned in an accident with her best friend. Eddie wasn’t even there, and the women were drunk and possibly had some unresolved drama. Shit happens.

I try to think about the bridal store again, the way Huntley smiled at me and treated me like I had just joined an exclusive club, how good that had felt. Emily’s hug and bright smile as she’d looked at the ring.