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had stopped spinning, but the trip-hammer in my chest had now gotten so loud I was afraid he’d hear it.
    “My second wedding took place in Southampton at my ex-wife’s home. Well, her palazzo, really. That divorce was much tamer, but I lost a fully reconstructed 1967 Lincoln convertible in the settlement. I think weddings are jinxed for me.” He finally looked at me. “If I were to get married again, I’d want to do it quickly.”
    “Like when?” I managed.
    “Three weeks from now. City Hall. Thursday at eleven-thirty.”
    So my book hit the stores, and a week later I was married. One thing about me, when I decide to turn my life upside down, I don’t mess around.
    •   •   •
    I’D BEEN SITTING on the bench for my entire stroll down Memory Lane. Now I stood, turned away from the apartment where I’d grown up and started back to the East Side. Remembering the early days with Jake had made me anxious to get home. And to be honest, it also made me just plain anxious in general. For one thing, I wanted to see if Jake was back yet. Not that I was worried—after all, I had the whole Talk thing figured out now—but for some reason I started counting in my head all the times lately that Jake had disappeared without saying where he was going. The number was high, a lot higher than I’d realized. At the entrance to the park I set a nice brisk pace, and as I walked I promised myself I was going to turn over a new leaf. No more sitting at home feeling sorry for myself. Tonight I’d go to Andy’s awards dinner with my husband and make him proud of me. I’d be charming and witty and fun. I picked up the pace some more. From now on, I told myself, I was going to start counting my blessings—and top on the list was Jake.
    I had to slow down because I was having a little trouble catching my breath. It probably wasn’t a great idea to try to power walk through Central Park when I hadn’t done anything more strenuous for the past month than take the elevator downstairs to our lobby to get the mail. I checked my watch; it was later than I thought. If I didn’t get home soon I wouldn’t have time to get dolled up. And I owed Jake that. Since there’s no way to hail a cab in the middle of Central Park, I picked up the pace again—a little slower this time.
    WHEN I ANNOUNCED to my mother and my brother—who was actually in the country at the time—that I was going to become Mrs. Jake Morris, they were happy that I seemed to have found aman who wasn’t: (a) debt ridden, (b) seeing his shrink seven days a week, or (c) an imbecile.
    However, on a long-distance call from California, Sheryl asked me a question I have never answered: “Does Jake really know you, Francesca?”
    I dodged. “He says he wants to marry me, so he must.”
    “But your father always used to say that you were … high maintenance.”
    “Daddy said that about me?” I tried not to sound dismayed, but Sheryl picked up on it anyway.
    “I think that was the wrong word. What he meant was, you’re like your mother.”
    Oh, please, no .
    “You’re like her when it comes to serious things like wanting to be a success and being ambitious. But sometimes you get confused about whether you want to be like her or like me. That makes you a little … needy. Does Jake know that?”
    “Trust me, when you meet Jake, you’ll love him as much as I do.”
    I knew I was ducking her question, but I had no intention of letting Jake see me in Bottomless Pit Mode before we tied the knot. Did Sheryl think I was nuts? I wanted to marry the man, not send him running in the opposite direction.
    Meanwhile there had been big changes, both in my mother’s life and in Pete’s. When I say big, I mean huge. My mother, the lawyer for victimized wives everywhere, was getting married again. His name was Lenny. His politics were impeccable—he’d been a Freedom Rider during the sixties—and he was a fellow workaholic, a shrink who worked in a storefront clinic in a