“But it’s strange,” said Benjamin. “Don’t you think it’s strange? Don’t you want more?”

“No,” I said. I didn’t think it was strange to not want gowns and diamonds and fancy parties on one’s wedding day. I didn’t think in itself this was alarming at all.

“Frances, I can afford a diamond. I want to buy my girl a diamond.”

I shook my head. “I don’t want a diamond.”

He looked at me for a long moment, then forced a laugh. “Girls with heads on their shoulders—a mixed blessing.” His hands twitched around each other in his lap. He was not nervous about marriage, of course: he was meant for marriage. He would be content in its warm headlock. But Benjamin knew, as I knew, that Bette was not made for marriage, and that if she didn’t know it that afternoon, she would figure it out one day, perhaps in the grocery store while choosing a melon, or at the tennis courts on a sunny Saturday, or outside their child’s school before the ringing of the final bell. He wiped his face. “Ignore me. Just jitters, I think. I’ll make myself a drink.” He walked off the deck and crossed the lawn to the bar. I watched him pour something into a glass and drink it and stand there alone, holding the table with one hand.

Inside, I knocked on Bette’s old bedroom door, and Gloria’s voice said, “Who’s there?”

“It’s Frances.”

The door opened, and there stood Gloria in a brassiere and girdle and stockings. Behind her, Bette was lying on her bed fully dressed, complete with white patent leather shoes, wearing more eye makeup than I’d ever seen her wear. Her short hair was blown dry and styled smartly. “Did the caterer find the wineglasses?” said Gloria.

Because I’d seen wineglasses on the bar outside, I said yes.

“Did they replace the wilted flowers?” she said.

“Yes,” I said.

Bette sighed loudly at the ceiling.

“Is my husband still tinkering with his toy?” said Gloria.

“I think so,” I said.

“What is Benjamin doing? Is he practicing his lines?”

I nodded. “He said the pastor’s late.”

“That pastor is always late,” said Gloria. To Bette, she said, “I warned you.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Bette quietly.

Bette’s old bedroom was large and bare, with beige walls and a light blue carpet that had seen heavy traffic. Her bed was high, with an antique wooden headboard, and each time she shifted it squeaked and knocked lightly against the wall. A car door slammed outside, and then another, and when I went to the window I saw that guests had begun to arrive. Grady was on the front porch, directing parking. He wore a blue seersucker suit with a red bow tie, and his hair was, as usual, uncombed.

Gloria joined me at the window. “The Tanners are here. And the Becks. And who is that? The Everests. People certainly are punctual, aren’t they?”

She stepped to the closet and pulled a lavender suit from a dry cleaning bag. While she dressed, I leaned over Bette. She was staring at the ceiling and humming softly. “What’s going on in your head?” I said.

I could see her deliberate between fibbing and telling the truth. “I’m just lying here, minutes before my wedding, thinking about diving.”

“Just diving, or diving a wreck?”

She nodded. “There’s one in the Keys, an albatross—that’s a plane, not a boat. Jane asked me to go down this weekend.”

“You’re busy this weekend.” In fact, Bette and Benjamin planned to take Grady’s boat to Bimini for their honeymoon.

“Yes, I am.” She blinked. “Mother, could you please leave?”

She said this as nicely as possible, but still Gloria, who was not yet zipped, was surprised. “I beg your pardon?” she said. I rushed to help her zip up. “Thank you, Frances. Dear, I will leave, but only because I want to check to make sure they didn’t bungle the order of the buffet.” She paused before leaving. “You look very pretty,” she told Bette. “Refresh your lipstick. You have ten minutes.”

When she’d left, Bette hopped off the bed and stood by the window, biting her nails. “We’re serving cocktails first. That was Benny’s idea,” she said. “He said he wanted people to relax and enjoy themselves.” She started to cry. When I stepped forward to console her—how I would do it, I didn’t know, she wasn’t a particularly consolable person—she raised a hand to stop me. “Don’t. I deserve it. It’s my fault.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Poor Benny.”

“He wants you to be happy,” I said, which was not quite the truth. He wanted her to be happy with him.

She stopped crying and stared through the window at the driveway. More car doors slammed. I stood next to her and watched as carload after carload of people—older people, mostly, Grady and Gloria’s age—stepped out, holding their hats and smoothing down their skirts. “There are Benjamin’s parents,” said Bette. She waved ineffectually at the window pane. “Hi Maggie, hi Bud,” she said softly. To me, she said, “They are such nice people. All of these people, all the people who are here, are really nice. It was kind of them to come.” She turned toward me. “You should marry Dennis,” she said. “You’ll have a beautiful wedding. You’ll look so pretty, and he’ll look so handsome, and the way you two look together—the way you two look at each other—you should marry him.” She glanced back out the window. “Will you?” she said.

“Yes,” I said.

“Promise?” she said, and again I said, “Yes.”

“My mother will be pleased. She likes you. I didn’t tell her you cut my hair.”

“I appreciate that.”

She started to undress, shoes and stockings first. Then off came her skirt, then her jacket, and then she was standing there in just a camisole, shivering. I handed her a pair of blue jeans and a blouse from her closet. “Are you absolutely sure?” I said.

“I’m so sorry.” She had her hand on the doorknob. “Will we still be friends?”

“Of course.” I reached out to touch her shoulder, and though she was not fond of displays of affection, she turned and hugged my neck, hard, before stepping through the doorway and hurrying down the stairs.

I found Dennis on the back porch with a bottle of beer in his hand. “Is the girl ready yet?” he said. “My mother is restless.”

Gloria was below us, on the patio by the pool, standing with a couple I’d never seen before. I caught her stare. Seeing my expression, she took a tentative step toward me, then stopped. She pointed at the back kitchen door. Dennis asked where I was going, but I didn’t stop to answer him. She reached the kitchen before I did and closed the door behind us. Inside, two black women in white aprons were stacking dishes and wiping down the counter. “Could we have a minute?” said Gloria, and the women left the room. She took me by the shoulders. “What is it? What did she do?”

“Gloria, she’s left.”

“No!” She smacked the counter with the flat of her hand, wincing, then smacked it again. “That little brat,” she said, but in the next moment her lip started to tremble. “Get Grady for me?”

I stepped out of the kitchen and signaled to Dennis. He came forward with long strides. “Get your father,” I said. He started to step into the kitchen—he could see his mother bent over the counter—but I stopped him. “Hurry.”

I led Gloria to the kitchen table and got a juice glass from the cupboard. I poured from a bottle of wine that was open in an ice bucket on the counter. She took several long swallows, then started to cry. “I’m sorry I yelled at you,” she said.

“That doesn’t matter.”

“I know it’s not your fault.”

It had not occurred to me, until that moment, that she might think this was my fault. How could it be? But the timing of events—my arrival on the scene, Bette’s assent to setting a wedding date, our burgeoning friendship, and now this horror: I suppose it was possible my presence had stirred the brew of their lives, however subtly. Gloria finished her wine and handed me the glass. “More, please,” she said, and I rushed to refill it. Grady came in the back door, Dennis behind him, and in a second Grady was kneeling beside his wife’s chair, and she was in his arms, sobbing. “It’s my fault,” she kept saying. “That spoiled little girl.”

Grady shushed her softly and said, “Sometimes things just go haywire.”

Dennis pulled me to his side and we watched his parents. “Where is she?”

“She left. Someone needs to tell Benjamin.”

“I’ll do it,” Dennis said. I stepped onto the back deck to give Gloria and Grady some privacy, and Dennis crossed the lawn toward the bar, where Benjamin stood with a small circle of friends. Dennis led him toward the house, and when they were far from other people, he put his arm around Benjamin’s large shoulders and started talking. Benjamin stopped short, then put a hand over his face. When his hand came down I saw that he was not angry, not upset. He looked calm but weary, and he nodded and took several deep breaths. He even looked around a little, as if hoping to see her, then turned back to Dennis and shook his hand. Together they made their way back up to the house.

Back in the kitchen, there was some discussion of who should be the one to make the announcement. Benjamin volunteered, then Gloria, then Grady—it was as if they were fighting for the unpleasant task, attempting to revive the good manners one expects on a wedding day. But Gloria was a mess—it was clear she’d been crying—and Grady seemed unable to leave her side, even to refill her glass, which I was called on to do a third time. In the end, it was Dennis who stepped onto the back deck and tapped a spoon against a glass to get the crowd’s attention. The rest of us huddled behind him. Fifty pairs of stylish couples and the odd single (including Marse, whom I’d spotted standing with Dennis’s friend Paul) peppered the lawn and the limestone patio, and in a moment all eyes were on Dennis. He held on to the wooden deck railing as he spoke. His voice shook. “Good afternoon,” he said, then cleared his throat and raised his voice. “We are so pleased all of you could make it here today to celebrate with our family.” He paused. It seemed, from his first sentence, that he was going to make a very different speech. “I love my sister,” he said. “I know you love her, too. But let’s face it, she’s an odd duck. And that’s part of what we love about her.” There was some nervous chuckling. “We want you to stay and eat and enjoy the afternoon, please. But I’m sorry to say there is not going to be a wedding.” A gentle gasp passed through the crowd. Benjamin’s parents, who were standing by the swimming pool, clutched each other and his mother put her hand to her mouth. Dennis raised his glass. “To love and friendship,” he said. “In all its forms.”

Dennis and I left the backyard together and walked around the side of the house, out of view, and once we were alone, he bent and put his hands on his knees. “You did great,” I said, and he said, “I thought I was going to vomit. I could kill Bette.” But when he rose up again, he was smiling. “I never said it would be dull, did I?” he said. I laughed, and then he started laughing. He took his keys from his pocket and pulled me toward the front of the house, then stopped: his car was buried several deep in the driveway. He took my hand and we weaved through the cars until we reached the far side of the driveway, and then we ducked under a ficus and emerged onto the neighbor’s lawn.

“Should we leave your parents?” I said.

“They’re fine. They’ll host.” He loosened his tie, and, not letting go of my hand, pulled me up to the neighbor’s front door. When a man answered, Dennis said, “I’m sorry to bother you, Mr. Costakis, but I was wondering if I might borrow a car.”

“Your sister’s on the lam, is she?” said Mr. Costakis. I guessed that he’d been spying and had seen her flee from the house. He chewed tobacco and ran a hand through his slick gray hair. “I should drop by for some grub.”

“Yes, it’s all very amusing,” said Dennis.

Mr. Costakis handed Dennis his keys. “Bring it back with a full tank,” he said, then extended a hand to me. “I’ve heard about you. You’ve taken a bite of our boy’s heart.”

I blushed. “Nice to meet you.”

We drove away then, and with the windows down I could hear the noise from Dennis’s family’s backyard, and from that distance it sounded no different from your average party, with glasses clinking and conversations humming. “Where are we going?” I said to Dennis.

“Wherever we want. ” He reached for my hand and brought it to his lips. He seemed content, driving through the early evening in a strange car. We took the highway north to Rickenbacker Causeway, then paid the toll and crossed onto Virginia Key, past the windsurfers off the narrow strip of beach, past the line of palm trees that shaded the sand, then over a second bridge onto Key Biscayne. We drove to the far tip of the key, then turned around and drove back. The sun was starting to set over downtown, and the buildings—the city seemed large to me then, though it would double in breadth and height and population during the time I lived there—reflected the pink-orange light. The water was dark blue, spitting whitecaps in the wind, and as we left the causeway behind I breathed deeply, inhaling the smell of the ocean. We wound down Bayshore Drive past Vizcaya, where we’d spent a magical night under the stars soon after meeting—it seemed a long time ago, even then—past Mercy Hospital, where almost every room had a bay view, past the coral rock houses of Coconut Grove and Biscayne Bay Yacht Club, where Dennis’s parents were members and one day we would be, and past Scotty’s and Dinner Key Marina and Dennis’s old elementary school. I had learned my way around, but I didn’t know how or when it had happened.