Chapter One

We were, as it happened, Donald and I, deciding that evening on how we would have our wedding invitations printed—Engraving? Thermography? Lithography?—when Adrienne, Donald's ex-fiancée, called to share her good news: she was leaving New York to accept a job in Washington, where we lived, just after the first of the year.

It was late November.

We were planning an April wedding.

And until that instant when the phone rang and Donald ran to the Caller ID box by the desk and froze, I had been planning–perhaps naively, perhaps idiotically–on taking the high road when it came to Adrienne and her relentless pursuit of friendship with Donald. I had vowed, without any true understanding of just how deep-rooted and, well, virulent, my particular strain of jealousy was, I see now, to put an end to my obsession. My suspicion. My frenzied insecurity. I had vowed, as they say, at long last, to get a grip.

On my demons.

On my nemesis.

On her.

Clearly this was wishful thinking on my part; a momentary lapse of delusional optimism (quite common, I'd read, with most brides-to-be), for nothing of the sort–maturity, acceptance, suffering in silence–was in the cards.

Especially now that she–Adrienne–would be living, as it were, in our backyard.

We had been staring intently at three pieces of Crane's Ecruwhite Kid Finish stationery stock that I'd managed to sneak out of Neiman Marcus's sample book as "souvenirs"–the salesman, stout, balding, moist, had excused himself to take a phone call from an important customer: "And will this be a surprise celebration for the Chief Justice?"