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dig my wedding ring out of my bra and stare at its out-of-place shape between my thumb and forefinger. How’s Bonnie to know? I start to slide it on, but the pale circle at the base of my finger that contrasts with the tanned length above and below makes me hesitate. It’s as if I’m wearing an invisible ring and, actually, I can still feel it there.
    Goose bumps rising, I turn the simple band around, reading the words inscribed on the inside: You and me. Forever.
    “About as make-believe as
H.E.A.
” However, once more I position the ring to slide it on.
Don’t do it. Bonnie’s right. When you make little girlscry, it’s time to say good-bye. Time to stopper the big yawn between now and the grave and get on with your life. Your life, Bridget. Easton is dead. Dead
.
    I try to say the four-letter word, but I can only mouth it. Yes, Easton is. Not just gone, as Bonnie pointed out. He’s … Yes, he is.
    In the next instant, anger stomps me up one side and down the other. What is my problem? “Easton is dead. D-E-A-D.” I curl my fingers around the ring. “And I can say …”
    A mental door behind which I haven’t looked in a long while creaks open, and I see Easton on our wedding day. It’s the first dance. A slow dance. He’s so near I can feel the beat of his heart. “And they lived,” he lowers his forehead to mine, “happily ever after.”
    I swallow hard. “No, they didn’t.” But I can say it. “Happily …” I draw a breath. “… ever after.”
    Now all I have to do is figure out how to live happily after ever after.

3

    Wednesday, August 11
    T he magazine made me do it. More specifically, the man on the cover—J. C. Dirk, whose Florida oceanfront condos have set the new standard for environmentally conscious developments. Forget that he hasn’t returned my phone calls and his assistant has become testy. I’m not going away. In fact, since he’s so busy, I’m going to him. Just as soon as I’ve done what I came here to do.
    “Ow!” I come up out of the chair only to be pushed back down.
    “It’s your own fault.” Georgia of Sisters’ Day Spa, with whom I attended kindergarten through twelfth grade, pulls her hand from my shoulder and frowns at me over the top of her hip, thick-framed glasses. “What’d you expect? They’d come out pretty as you please?” She returns her attention to the dread she’s attempting to unravel with a steel-toothed comb. “No ma’am, you don’t traipse around in gnarly hair for years and get off that easy.” Georgia never much liked me.
    “Don’t be givin’ her a hard time, Georgie.” That’s older sister Savannah—yes, Savannah and Georgia, whose mother never got over her homesickness when she married into Pickwick, North Carolina.
    Savannah, with hands infinitely gentler and personal style finitely more laid back (she wears contacts), continues. “She’s here, isn’t she? I’d say she’s seen the error of her ways.”
    I’ve seen no such thing. It’s time, is all. Under cover of the itchy cape, I rub the ring suspended from a chain around my neck. Unfortunately, the quest for J. C. Dirk has pushed up the timetable. The only reason I haven’t suffered much backlash from wearing dreads all these years is because I own and work a nursery, but if I’m going to gain an audience with the environmentally conscious developer, I have to fit into his world. And according to the article in the magazine I stumbled on two weeks ago, my dreadlocks are not a normal part of his uppity world.
    “Isn’t that right, Bridget?” Savannah leans to the side to meet my gaze in the beauty station’s mirror.
    As much as I’d like to challenge the “error of my ways,” the sisters have personal experience with them, even though my erroneous ways predate today by more than a dozen years. Too, I am at their mercy. And they came in after hours so this could be done without gossips looking on.
    I clear my throat. “I’ve certainly made mistakes in