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for very long?”
    Nana shook her head. “It happened real sudden-like.”
    “Heart attack?”
    “Ice shanty. And Tilly here lost her brother a few months back, didn’t you, Til?”
    “A tragic accident,” Tilly said glumly. “He fell from his saddle during an ostrich race in Kuwait and was trampled by the rest of the pack. It was sad he couldn’t have held on. He’d been in first place until then, and the grand prize was an oil well.”
    Bailey stared at Tilly, her breathing shallow.
    “Even Emily’s lost someone,” Nana continued.
    Bailey turned her soulful gaze on me and sniffed loudly. “Who did you lose?”
    I whipped my head around at Nana. “Who did I lose?”
    “Your young man, dear.”
    Bailey sucked in her breath. “You lost someone in a tragic accident, too?”
    Why was it that the subject you wanted to talk about the least was the subject everyone else wanted to talk about the most? “I didn’t lose anyone,” I defended, but my halfhearted denial tipped Bailey off immediately.
    “That’s okay,” she rasped through her grief. “You can tell me. What happened? Did your guy find another woman?” When I winced, she clapped her hand over her mouth. “Another man?”
    “That woulda been her first husband,” Nana said.
    “ALL RIGHT!” I sputtered. “You want to know what happened? I’ll tell you. But first you tell me: when a man tells you he loves you, what usually happens after that?”
    “In what society?” asked Tilly.
    “Great sex,” said Nana.
    “He asks you to marry him,” said Bailey.
    I pointed my finger at Bailey. “Exactly. He proposes marriage. And when he tells you he has an important question to ask, you expect him to say, ‘Will you marry me?’ Right?”
    The three women nodded.
    “Well, not Etienne Miceli.
Nooo
. A marriage proposal from my black-haired, blue-eyed Swiss/ German/Italian police inspector with the washboard stomach and one percent body fat? Huh!”
    “Are you going to mention the thong?” Tilly asked.
    I rolled my eyes and plunged on. “After nine long months of phone calls, separation anxiety, and cybersex, after an agonizing month dealing with his short-term memory loss, do you know what he finally remembers to ask me?”
    Nana raised her hand. “I know, but I don’t wanna spoil it for no one else.”
    “HE INVITES ME TO THE MICELI FAMILY REUNION NEXT MAY! Next
May!
It might as well be the next millennium. And why does he invite me to his family’s reunion?” I gave Nana a take-it-away gesture.
    She sucked on her dentures and offered a little shrug. “You’re goin’ a little fast for me, dear. I’m still back at the part where you done the cybersex.”
    I threw my hands into the air. “Because I have to meet his grandmother! It’s mandatory. Before you can entertain even a fleeting thought about marrying into the Miceli family, you need to pass muster with
Nonna
Annunziata. And her appointment book is filled until next May because the family has grown so large. Just my luck — Micelis are serial breeders.”
    Tilly thwacked her walking stick on the leg of the cot. “Old world culture, Emily. These Swiss/ German/Italians aren’t the kind of people who frequent Las Vegas wedding chapels.”
    “I don’t think they do weddings, period.”
    “They love weddings,” Tilly corrected. “But they’re also known to have engagements that last forever. Italian men don’t believe in rushing into anything when they have the rest of their lives to plan the details.”
    “Well, I have no intention of being engaged for the rest of my life! I’m thirty years old. I have better things to do than wait for Etienne Miceli to parade me past all the relatives for their ‘old world’ approval. If he can’t decide on his own that I’m the woman he wants to grow old with, then…then…”
    I heaved an anguished sigh, feeling like a Mylar balloon with a helium deficiency. “What is it with me? All the men in the world, and I have to fall in love