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wished she could take a poison-tipped lance to the entire wedding industry. Downgrade your average twenty-first-century nuptial extravaganza to quiet vows, taken in the presence of dear friends and family, and half the engaged couples—the right half—would drop the entire notion of marriage on the spot. Persuade couples to save the party for their twenty-fifth anniversary, when his hairline had evaporated and her waist was thick from childbearing, and a whole lot of them would retract in horror. But by the time they came to her, the barn door was bolted and the horse long gone.
    â€œ Doubt can be a gift. ” Rebecca spoke the phrase aloud, as if testing its weight and repeatability. “That’s good.”
    Grace felt the weight of Rebecca’s cynicism. Then she felt the weight of her own.
    â€œIt’s not that I don’t believe in human transformation,” she said, trying not to sound as defensive as she felt. “Human transformation is possible. It requires immense courage and selflessness, but it does happen. It’s just that we spend so much effort on that slim possibility of correction and none at all on the side of prevention. That’s a serious disconnect, don’t you think?”
    Rebecca nodded vaguely, but now she was busy. She was scribbling, her left hand all knuckles, the pen jerking and sputtering along the wide-ruled lines. After a moment, she came to the end of whatever she was trying to get down. Then she looked up and said with perfect therapeutic intonation: “Can you say more about that?”
    Grace took a breath and went on. It was one of the more pointed ironies of her profession, she explained, that when you asked people what they wanted in a mate, they tended to offer you sobering, mature, insightful truths: Protection and companionship, they said, nurturing and stimulation, a snug harbor from which to be outward bound. But when you looked at their actual partnerships, where were those things? These same insightful and eloquent people were alone or in combat, perpetually diminished. There was abandonment and friction, competition and hindrance, and all because, at some point, they had said yes to the wrong person. So they came to her with this broken thing that needed fixing, but there was nothing to be gained by explaining it all now. You had to explain it all before they said yes to the wrong person.
    â€œI’m getting married,” Rebecca said, quite suddenly, when she had finished writing all or some of this down.
    â€œCongratulations,” Grace told her. “That’s wonderful news.”
    The girl burst out laughing. “ Really. ”
    â€œYes. Really. I hope you will have a beautiful wedding and, more importantly, a wonderful marriage.”
    â€œSo wonderful marriages are possible?” she said, enjoying herself.
    â€œOf course. If I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t be here.”
    â€œAnd you wouldn’t be married, I suppose.”
    Grace smiled evenly. It had been a struggle to give up even the limited amount of information her publisher insisted on. Therapists did not advertise their personal lives. Authors, apparently, did. She had promised Jonathan that their lives as a couple, as a family, would stay as private as they possibly could. Actually, he hadn’t seemed as bothered by it all as she was herself.
    â€œTell me about your husband,” said Rebecca now, as Grace had known she would.
    â€œHis name is Jonathan Sachs. We met in college. Well, I was in college. He was in medical school.”
    â€œSo he’s a doctor?”
    He was a pediatrician, Grace said. She didn’t want to say the name of the hospital. It changed things. All of this was readily available on any Internet search of her name, because she was mentioned in the short piece New York magazine had done a few years earlier, in the annual Best Doctors issue. The photograph showed Jonathan in his scrubs, his curly dark