Margot didn’t have anyone like that. She could never call Edge about something like the Notebook. Instead she called her father. No answer. She called again and left a voice mail.

“Hey, Dad, it’s Margot. Jenna has misplaced the Notebook. She had it last night at dinner, she said? She thinks maybe she left it in the cab? Any thoughts? Call me back.”

Margot then sent her father a text: Jenna lost Notebook.

And another: Please call me.

Jenna, meanwhile, was still on the phone with Stuart. In the Notebook, their mother had referred to Jenna’s future husband, whoever he may be, as her Intelligent, Sensitive Groom-to-Be-and Stuart fit the bill. Jenna had already calmed down; she had stopped crying.

Margot marched upstairs. Jenna’s luggage was in the hallway, and Margot started to look through it, thinking, Please appear, please appear.

What appeared were a pair of shapely, tanned legs. Finn’s legs. Margot used to have legs like that, back in her surfing days, before she worked sixty-five hours a week trying to support three kids and an ex-husband.

Finn said, “Why are you going through Jenna’s things?”

Her voice was accusatory, but Margot didn’t even both looking up.

Finn said, “Oh, shit.”

“Exactly,” Margot said. A second later, her cell phone buzzed in her pocket. Involuntarily, she thought: Edge.

But it was her father.

“I have it,” he said.

Margot filled with giddy relief, and Jenna sobbed with tears of joy. One of the best feelings in the world was finding something you were sure you’d lost forever.

A little while later, a white van pulled into the driveway behind Margot’s LR3. She poked her head out the side door. The Sperry Tent Company. She hoped she didn’t have to sign anything or decide anything. She hoped the four guys who hopped out of the truck knew exactly what they were doing. She hoped that Roger, the wedding planner, had reminded the tent guys about her mother’s perennial bed.

Beth had been a fanatical gardener, and some of those perennials were over forty years old, which made them heirloom. Or maybe not. Margot knew nothing about gardening; every year, she killed one store-bought herb garden by placing it on her fire escape and forgetting to water it.

Out the back screen door, which faced the yard, Margot called to her children, “The gentlemen are here to set up the tent! Either make yourself useful or get out of the way!” Ellie was lying on her stomach on the swing, spinning in circles until the ropes were twisted to the top.

“Eleanor, come in, please!” Margot called.

“No!” Ellie said.

Margot sighed. Was it too early for wine?

Upstairs, Margot heard Jenna and her maidens milling around; she caught the occasional burst of laughter. The hysteria over the missing Notebook had subsided-THANK GOD-and shortly thereafter, Autumn Donahue had arrived in a cab from the airport. Autumn had been Jenna’s roommate at the College of William and Mary. She had beautiful copper-colored hair and freckles and brown eyes and was the visual antidote to Jenna’s and Finn’s uncompromising blondness. Autumn swore like a sailor, and she could turn any situation pornographic in seconds. At the bridal shower, which had been attended by Pauline, as well as Jenna’s future mother-in-law, Ann Graham, Autumn had seen fit to give Jenna a two-headed vibrator and a tube of lubricant.

“Just turn that thing on for Stuart,” Autumn had said. “He’ll love it.”

Autumn always dated three men at the same time; she called these men her “lov-ahs,” and she sometimes threw a random one-night stand into the mix. She had never been in love; she had no intention of ever falling in love.

Quite frankly, Margot admired this about Autumn.

Margot was waiting for a text from Edge. She had texted him the night before to tell him that Drum Sr. was getting married. What she’d written was: Drum Sr. is getting married to someone named Lily the Pilates instructor.

When, after thirty minutes, she hadn’t received a response, she had written: No, seriously, Drum Sr. is getting married.

Margot had fallen asleep with the phone in her hand, waiting for a response. But in the morning there was still nothing from Edge. Margot found this silence perplexing. He often let one or more of her texts go without a response, but a text about her ex-spouse remarrying? That was real news. It deserved something. Then Margot began to worry that Edge wasn’t responding because he thought Margot was fishing for a proposal herself. Ha! The mere idea of a proposal from Edge was ludicrous. He had allowed her to spend the night at his apartment only once-and then only because he’d had a favor to ask of her.

She wouldn’t let herself think about that night, Picholine for dinner first, then the unprecedented invitation to sleep over, then the ask, like a cold hand on her throat. Griffin Wheatley, Homecoming King. She couldn’t think about it.

Maybe Edge was just busy. He had been preparing for court all week; he was taking over something called the “shitshow Cranbrook case” for Margot’s father. Margot had asked what that meant, but he hadn’t told her; he couldn’t tell her about any of his cases-not only because it was privileged information, but because Edge didn’t want Margot to accidentally slip up in front of her father.

The result of this was that Margot knew next to nothing about Edge’s work life or how he spent his days. She almost preferred the way things had been with Drum Sr. Drum Sr. had done nothing for work, but at least that nothing had been reported to Margot in excruciating detail. Going for run in park. Back from run. ATM, $80. Warren Miller film-off the hook! Thinking about enchiladas for dinner-ok with u? Store. Sale on canned tomatoes, buying 3. Picking up Ellie now. Walking. What is name of Peyton’s mom? And what is wrong with her face? Margot used to sit in her office at Miller-Sawtooth, which was the most prestigious executive search firm in the world, and receive these texts and think, Don’t you understand that I am too busy for this piddly-shit?

Now, with Edge, Margot would kill for some piddly-shit. She would kill to know what he had for breakfast. But he told her nothing. If he was feeling expressive, he would text, In court. Or, With Audrey, who was his six-year-old daughter.

Margot checked her phone: nothing. It was quarter to six. Maybe Edge was in a meeting with a new client; those could take a while. Maybe he was so busy preparing for court-with his favorite paralegal, Rosalie-that he simply hadn’t had time to check his phone. But Edge checked his phone compulsively. The red light blinked, and he salivated as though the next text or e-mail was going to offer him a million free dollars or a house on the beach in Tahiti. With clients, he prided himself on responding within sixty seconds. But Margot he let languish for days.

Most of Margot and Edge’s relationship had taken place via text, which had started out seeming modern and sexy. They would go back and forth for hours-and unlike in actual conversation, Margot could take her time to compose witty responses. She could text things she was too shy to express in person.

But the texting now was frustrating beyond all comprehension. It made Margot want to tear her hair out. It made her-late one night when she and Edge had been going back and forth and then she texted I miss u and heard nothing back-throw her phone across the room, where it, thankfully, landed in her laundry basket. She both hated the texting and was addicted to it. She despised her phone-the seventy-two times a day she checked to see if Edge had texted were torturous-and then if she did have a text from him, she went to absurd lengths to answer it, no matter what she was doing. She had answered texts from him under the table in big client meetings. She had stood up and left Ellie’s kindergarten play (Stone Soup) to text Edge from the school corridor. She had texted while driving, she had texted him drunkenly from the bathroom while she was out with her girlfriends, she had texted him from the treadmill at the gym. The texting with Edge was keeping her from being present in her real life. It was awful, she had to stop, she had to control it somehow, to keep it from destroying her.

Because now, on Thursday, July 18, instead of focusing on her sister’s bachelorette party, which she, Margot, had organized and which was due to begin shortly, Margot was thinking: I texted him nineteen hours ago and he hasn’t responded. Why not? Where is he and what is he doing? He isn’t thinking about me.

Margot remembered when she had stood in this very house waiting for the mail to arrive because she was expecting a letter from her high school boyfriend, Grady Maclean. That had been stressful in the same sort of way, except then all of Margot’s anxiety had been focused on one moment of the day, and once she got a letter-Grady Maclean had been pretty devoted for a fifteen-year-old boy-she didn’t have to sweat it out until the following week.

At that moment, a text came into her phone, and Margot thought, There he is, finally! But when she checked, she saw it was a text from her father. Okay, that was absolutely the worst: she had waited and waited for a text, and then a text came in, but from the wrong person.

The text read: Pauline isn’t coming to the wedding.

Margot stared at her phone. She thought, WTF? Her mind was whizzing now. This was family drama, exactly the type that was supposed to happen at weddings. Pauline wasn’t coming!

Why did this news make Margot feel so buoyant? Was it because deep down she didn’t like Pauline, or was it because Margot was grateful for something to think about other than Drum Sr. getting married to Lily the Pilates instructor or Edge’s nonresponse to Drum Sr. marrying Lily the Pilates instructor, or… Griffin Wheatley, who was still irritating a part of Margot’s mind. (He had looked great with the scruff on his face-like Tom Ford or James Denton. Margot had always seen him within an hour of his last shave.)

Margot decided she was simply grateful for the distraction. She had nothing against Pauline, Pauline was harmless, Pauline was devoted to their father. So then why wasn’t she coming to the wedding?

And what about Rhonda? Margot wondered. Would Rhonda still come to the wedding? Rhonda Tonelli, Pauline’s daughter, was serving as Jenna’s fourth bridesmaid. Jenna hadn’t wanted Rhonda, but their father had asked (okay, begged), and since he was paying well into the six figures to make this wedding happen, Jenna had acquiesced.

It would be much better if neither Pauline nor Rhonda came this weekend. Margot felt a space open up in her chest where, apparently, anxiety about Pauline and Rhonda had been residing like an undiagnosed tumor.

There would be an uneven number of bridesmaids and groomsmen. Roger might fret about that, but who cared?

Maybe they could find someone to fill in for Rhonda. Jenna had a group of fellow teachers from Little Minds coming.

Margot’s thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the side door. Margot spun around, phone in hand. It was Roger.

“Roger!” Margot said. “I was just thinking about you.”

Roger blinked. Something was wrong. Had he already heard they might be down a bridesmaid?

“The tent guys have an issue with the tree,” he said.

“What tree?” Margot said. “You mean Alfie?”

Roger swallowed. He was uncomfortable, she knew, calling the tree by a person’s name.

“I thought we went over all of this,” Margot said. “I thought they could fit the tent under Alfie.”

“They thought so too, Margot,” Roger said. “But that one branch has dropped since we measured it in April. It’s dropped a lot.”

“Shoot,” Margot said. She didn’t have time to deal with another unforeseen snafu. It was already six o’clock, she needed to unpack her suitcase and hang up her bridesmaid dress, she needed to run to the store for groceries, feed her children, take a shower, change, and she had hoped to open a bottle of champagne here with Jenna and the girls before their dinner reservation at eight. “I’m sure you guys will figure out what to do.”

“I’ll tell you what we need to do,” Roger said. “If you want the big tent to go up, you are going to have to let them cut that branch.”

“Which branch?” Margot asked. She was relieved that the problem had a solution. Maybe. She and Roger walked to the back door together and peered out at Alfie. Margot’s chest, which had for a few short, sweet minutes been a wide-open breezeway, now felt like it was clogging with cement. “Which branch are you talking about? Not the…”