Chapter Four

Now

I made it home after only a mild battle against the traffic. My cat, Dewey, greeted me at the door with his usual loudmouthed bid for attention. I bent to scratch his head, but it was never enough for him and he pursued me through the house, winding between my ankles and meowing.

“All right, all right,” I said, hunkering down to give him a more thorough petting. He flopped onto his side and started doing all his best yoga stretches for me. I rubbed his belly and lied to him that he was a good boy. He ate it up.

Partially satisfied, Dewey let me get back to the business of coming home. I let my laptop cycle on while I divested myself of the crap I toted to work. There were an impressive number of junk emails. The only items of interest were a random hello from my friend Deanna, and the notice that my order from Gap.com had shipped. But I couldn’t concentrate well enough to read Deanna’s message thoroughly, let alone respond to it.

Dewey jumped onto my lap and put his paws on the keyboard sending the computer into fits. I knocked him away, but he was like a feline bungee jumper and popped immediately back into the same position. The computer went into a restart cycle, thanks to Dewey’s lucky paw placement. Taking it as a sign, I decided to go through my snail mail instead.

Again, a remarkable collection of junk with only a few gems. New issue of Glamour, funny card from my sister, Darcy, and the unmistakable calligraphy of a wedding invitation. I slit it open and extracted the inner envelope. It was a square one. Expensive. Usually means an expensive wedding to go with it. The invitation was for Jessie’s wedding.

I carried the card to the bulletin board where I kept invitations and announcements pinned. This year was shaping up to be a wedding extravaganza already. I had four Save the Date cards on the board, two invitations and a bridal shower invitation. As luck would have it, Jessie’s wedding was on a different day than any other event so far. God forbid I should miss an opportunity to wear uncomfortable shoes and eat lukewarm chicken cordon bleu. I tapped the date into my phone’s calendar and made a mental note to find out if Matt was invited.

He probably would be. Jessie had adored Matt since freshman year. She always said he was the nicest boy in the world, even now that he hardly qualified as a boy. All because of Halloween.