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Several Weeks Earlier

One never knew when a comically oversized resin clam was going to come in handy, and Jess Bricker happened to know a guy who could procure one for her on short notice. That was why nervous prospective spouses paid Jess top dollar to find rare items like this—items that were somehow vital to their marriage proposals—and then get the hell out of the way.

Standing outside the largest tank at the Appalachian Seas Aquarium, Jess waved at the dive supervisor as he gently placed the faux shell in the tank’s seaweed bed. Glittering clouds of fish swarmed around Dive Shop Dave, clearly expecting some sort of food. Dave double-checked that the precious package was inside the shell and flashed Jess a thumbs-up. Those frustrated fish jetted away, unfed.

Shaking her head, Jess stepped back to appreciate the visual scope of her evening’s work. She chewed on a full bottom lip that had bid goodbye to its coat of nude rose gloss after her fourth coffee of the day. The aquarium was home to one of the few whale-shark-friendly exhibits in the world. Tonight’s (human) guest of honor, Samantha, was an avid scuba diver. Her longtime boyfriend, Gage, had gotten certified on the sly just so he could gift her a private birthday dive with the gentle giants—a big unchecked box on Samantha’s bucket list.

The tank’s shadowed viewing room was cleared after closing, giving Jess and the aquarium staff time to stage this romantic tableau for the future Mr. and Mrs. Gage Hallidon. Maintenance workers had meticulously scrubbed fingerprints from the tank’s thick acrylic, removing all evidence that hordes of elementary school students had herded through only hours before. A sweetheart table for two stood near the tank’s front, centered in a pool of rippling blue light. The effect was dreamy and ethereal, enough to make any mermaid’s heart go…swish?

How did mermaids’ hearts go?

“This is not the first time I’ve said this, but that is a weird question to be asking yourself at ten o’clock on a weeknight,” Jess muttered under her breath. “Also, it’s a little sad how often you talk to yourself.”

The picture was almost perfection, but she hadn’t become one of Nashville’s best-kept matrimonial secrets by creating almost perfection. Jess picked up her Bluetooth earpiece, careful not to knock any element of the teal and silver tablescape aside. She murmured into the attached lapel mic. “Hey, Bob, the lighting feels a little cold. Anything we can do about that?”

The earpiece cheeped and the aquarium’s facilities supervisor replied, “Sure thing, Jess.”

Jess smiled as the overhead lights shifted ever so slightly to a warm peachy glow, thanks to colored gels meant to imitate a sunset over the ocean. She closed her eyes, imagining she was the birthday girl and a man like Gage loved her enough to set something like this up for her.

“Jess, Jess, Mermaid is in the cave,” Bob murmured over Jess’s earpiece. “Repeat, Mermaid is in the cave. Over.”

She snorted softly to herself. Bob was really embracing this whole “secret mission” aesthetic. Of course, he was earning double overtime thanks to Gage’s generous private rental fee, which bought a lot of goodwill.

“Got it, Bob. Mark this setting and then cut the lights outside the tank so Mermaid can’t see the table,” she said. The lights clicked off immediately, leaving Jess bathed in the otherworldly marine glow. She smiled, retreating into a recessed alcove near displays that explained the feeding habits of all the animals in the Swimming with Legends exhibit. The angle to see into the tank’s overhead maintenance space was spot-on, so she could see Gage and Samantha in full scuba gear. “Countdown to splash-in?”

“Splash-in imminent. Over,” Bob responded, just as the couple dropped into the water in a profusion of bubbles.

“And…showtime,” Jess whispered into the lapel mic, her wide gray eyes tracking Gage’s and Samantha’s descent through the water.

The next few minutes ran like clockwork. After initially skittering away from the intrusive splash, the fish edged back toward the happy couple as if they’d always been part of the ecosystem. Samantha whirled around like a mini-typhoon, trying to see everything at once through her bright pink scuba mask. And while whale sharks couldn’t be trained, technically, the enormous dark silhouette glided through the water behind them as if on cue. Jess signaled Andrew Daysong, a local photographer Jess regularly hired to shoot her clients’ events. He stepped forward, discreetly capturing the moment that Samantha practically vibrated with joy under the water. It would be the perfect photo for their future mantel: Gage and Samantha perfectly framed by the tank walls with a whale shark hovering peacefully behind them.

The gargantuan shark turned to avoid swimming directly into the tank wall. Samantha put her hand out and, under the careful supervision of Dive Shop Dave, let it slide gently along the whale shark’s side. As the whale disappeared into the recesses of the tank, Gage pretended to notice the clamshell and motioned to Samantha to follow him to the bottom. Samantha fluttered her fins, frequently glancing up to follow the whale shark’s progress. Gage reached for the fake giant clamshell and Samantha seemed to panic, motioning for him to stop. Jess assumed Samantha didn’t want to be kicked out of the aquarium for harassing marine life.

Samantha’s hands froze as Gage lifted the resin lid and a seahorse-shaped foam case floated to their eye level. Gage plucked the box from the ribbon tethering it to the clamshell.

Samantha’s hand started shaking in a whole new way as Gage snapped open the case and presented the tasteful diamond solitaire. Andrew dashed forward to snap a series of photos as Samantha nodded frantically, then tried to kiss Gage. Their face gear clacked together almost audibly, even through the thick acrylic tank wall.

Andrew’s camera went into rapid-fire mode, and he flashed a grin at Jess. In all the proposals they’d worked together, it was rare to find a spontaneous moment that charmed them both. It was possible they were becoming a bit jaded. Gage and Samantha kicked toward the surface, even as Samantha seemed to forget how her legs worked.

Within five minutes—as long as Gage followed the carefully timed plan—the happy couple would emerge from the tank, swath themselves in matching bathrobes, and sit down for dinner for two, serenaded by a string quartet playing soft instrumental selections from The Little Mermaid soundtrack. The musicians—each dressed as a different aquatic creature—appeared from a side door. They quietly took their seats, having tuned up in the Gallery of Jellyfish. Andrew moved into position so that he could capture Samantha’s face as she realized that Gage’s surprise wasn’t limited to the tank.

Jess’s cell buzzed in her pants pocket, the vibration echoing through the silence of the exhibit room. Huffing out an annoyed breath, she pulled the phone out to see UNKNOWN CALLER on her lock screen. Jess pressed the “Ignore” button. Even if her beloved grandmother called during a job, Jess wouldn’t take it. Distractions at this stage only led to chaos.

Besides, barring a hip-breaking, ambulance-necessitating emergency, Nana Blanche knew to text when Jess was working, not call. The messages were fully punctuated, and each and every one was signed “Sincerely, Blanche Bricker . ” But she texted.

The number calling was local. Jess frowned at the screen. Could it be the Anellos’ lawyers? Anxiety, sharp and cold as December well water, flooded Jess’s belly.

Jess shook her head, swallowing the lump gathering in her throat. She’d thought she had more time. Losing her snug matchbox of a rental apartment over the TonyCakes bakery would mean she also lost the adjacent upstairs storage room, which served as—under the strictest of descriptions—the offices for Bricker Consultants, Inc. Upon the death of their patriarch, the Anellos told Jess a few developers had expressed interest in buying the building and turning it into a condo/retail center. Tony Anello’s kids were reluctant to further gentrify their little neighborhood and said that ideally, they would like to sell the building to “someone” like Jess. While Bricker Consultants was doing well for a two-person operation, Jess didn’t have that kind of money. She couldn’t dream of making an offer. The Anellos told Jess it would take the lawyers weeks to work through the estate details if she wanted to think it over. But it wasn’t as if a few weeks would magically make “real estate money” appear in her accounts. Maybe the family had reached a decision about selling?

“No. You might evict me, but not today,” she muttered, choosing to focus on the positive. Jess was sure she could find some other kindly septuagenarian to offer her a sweetheart rental deal on a comfortable, conveniently located living-slash-workspace in a safe building that felt like home. And always smelled like cake.

Yeah, she was doomed.

Just as Jess shoved her phone back in her pocket, it rang again. UNKNOWN CALLER screamed at her from the screen again . She pressed “Ignore” again , then opened her call list to block the number.

Jess had a job to do. She wasn’t going to give Gage and Samantha anything less than her best just because she was suffering a minor “Nashville’s nightmare real estate market-related” panic attack. She made a decent living, but increased rent was the sort of expense that could crush her business over time.

Shaking off her cobwebby angst thoughts, she whispered into her lapel mic, “OK, Bob, Mermaid is leaving the cave. Bring up the table lights to the previous setting.”

Jess signaled the lead violinist, a lanky man who bore playing in a full lobster costume with good humor. He nodded to his fellow musicians. A pleased smile spread across Jess’s face as the violins’ warm notes filled the darkness.

When Jess came up with the idea for her “consulting firm” years before, this bliss by proxy was the feeling she’d been chasing. Jess had survived three grueling years assisting one of the city’s most feared wedding planners before she realized she wanted more. “Feared” might seem like a strange way to describe a bridal industry professional until one considered how many florists Angenette Ellis had made sob into their gardenias over the years. Being mentored by that woman had been like Navy SEAL training, but with more buttermints.

Even as she watched Angenette conjure lush, elegant magic from nothing, it seemed to Jess that so many of these events started with uninspired proposal stories. Jess decided to break out on her own and give her brides (and grooms) a story that showed how loved they were, a story they would tell their children. She used the observational skills Angenette had helped her develop to create grandly romantic moments on a much smaller scale. She picked up details from a couple’s story or a photo or conversation and turned them into a scenario that made a proposal perfect. The professional stress levels were still there but seemed less dire when she was controlling her own schedule and workload.

Jess had carved this business out of nothing, creating a network of contacts and word-of-mouth referrals from sheer determination—all while appearing pretty and pleasing to the country club set. It certainly hadn’t been easy, and occasionally, the returns were thin, but smiling while swanning through a shitstorm was where those private-school comportment lessons came in handy.

And the results were worth it. Her refusal rates were less than four percent, and according to social media, most of her couples remained married. Just look at Gage and Samantha, starting their life story. And Jess had been able to get in on the ground floor of what should be an epic and adorable tale.

Jess’s cell rang. Again. Gritting her teeth, she opened the block feature on her phone—again—and noticed that the tiny print under the number read TILLARD PECANS .

Weird.

While Georgia might produce the most pecans as a state, the Tillard family had made use of hardy pecan species that grew in western Tennessee and maximized their proximity to interstate connections for distribution. Tillard Pecans graced the shelves of every grocery store in America. They were used in holiday dishes and trail mixes and anywhere pecans could be pecan’d.

“What the?” Jess frowned at her screen. She’d never done business with anyone from Tillard’s. How did they get her business line number? It could be a telemarketing thing, but she had no idea what they would sell her. It wasn’t as if Jess bought nuts in bulk. Sure, she’d attended Harrow University with the heir to the company. Anyone enrolled there was aware of the Pecan Prince, whose family had built the Tillard Stadium, the Tillard Amphitheater, and the Tillard Commuter Parking Lot.

Yes, really.

So while she was aware of Trenton Tillard the Fourth, and they’d shared some business classes, Jess wasn’t sure she’d ever spoken to him directly.

Gage and Samantha interrupted this tree-nut-based train of thought by gamboling through the door, dressed in their matching teal bathrobes, embroidered with the aquarium logo for the occasion. They were giggling and kissing like a pair of lovestruck teenagers. Jess signaled the rest of the costumed string quartet, who began playing “Under the Sea.” At the sight of the table and the musicians, Samantha squealed with delight and threw her arms around Gage.

“Everything is just so perfect!” Samantha sobbed into his neck, the diamond flashing on her finger. Andrew dutifully recorded this reaction for the custom hardcover album Jess would create as part of Bricker Consultants’ Tulip Package. “You must have been planning this for months !”

Jess never got tired of hearing that. Or, rather, overhearing that. She was usually tucked somewhere out of the way to observe her work unfold, uncredited.

Jess quickly blocked the pecan company’s number from her phone. As Papa Burt would say, Jess wasn’t going to worry about making tomorrow’s money today.

As the couple settled at the table, Jess whispered into her lapel mic, signaling the caterers to deliver dinner. She lived for smiles like Samantha’s. The look of absolute unfettered joy on Samantha’s face as she threw her arms around the person she loved the most, in the moment that she knew his commitment to her was concrete.

Jess breathed deeply, wallowing in this moment of professional fulfillment, however brief.

Sometimes it made Jess a little sad that she didn’t have any such occasion in her near future. Marriage wasn’t an end-all, be-all guarantee of happily ever after, but it could be pretty nice from what Jess saw in her grandparents. Then again, Jess worked too damn much to have time for dating. And frankly, the men in her social circle were…

Nana Blanche hadn’t exactly raised her to hold her tongue, but it seemed like a waste of perfectly acidic internal dialogue to describe Jess’s feckless, emotionally lazy, self-obsessed potential dating pool. Doing her job felt like she was rewarding people who had managed to strike gold in a manure pile.

So her current life’s path boiled down to a single entry in a carefully organized planner that only existed in Jess’s head called Jess’s Big Book of Life Plans. One of the first plans was Just keep working until you figure out the rest .

Hours later, with the lovebirds safely betrothed and their dinner debris packed away, Jess bid good night to Dave and Bob and exited through the staff door. A stuffed sea otter she’d snagged from the gift shop—leaving cash, plus tax, behind—was tucked under her arm. Yes, it was a little silly, but Otter Chaos needed a good home.

Now that Jess had run out of details to fixate on, thoughts on the disruptive series of phone calls earlier crept into her head. What was that about? She could write off the Tillard call as a mistake, but the unknown number called twice…Was it the Anellos’ lawyers? Did lawyers work this late? The vicious taskmaster that was her anxiety urged her to unblock both numbers, call them back, and find out. But Jess needed to climb into her ancient Ford sedan and mentally prepare for the brutal gauntlet of a nighttime Nashville drive. The Music City was a beating heart of traffic flow, an urban microclimate surrounded by suburban neighborhood bubbles, each with their own flavor of Southern. Then there were the outer rings of farmland, plus woods deep enough to maintain a healthy supply of ghost stories. It was the world’s biggest small town, where everybody knew everybody in their little corner. Jess had never lived anywhere else, and had never had the urge to.

Just as she unlocked her car, a shiny blue Tesla came roaring into the parking lot, braking a scant few feet from Jess. For a moment, Jess had a metric ton of empathy for headlight-bound deer.

“What the hell?” Jess shouted as a tall redhead climbed out of the driver’s seat.

Even in her panic, Jess knew she should recognize this woman’s face, a pearlescent oval crafted for magazine covers, framed by coppery waves. But it was the eyes that finally sparked a shiver of dread down Jess’s spine, the deep brown eyes that could be warm and friendly but Jess knew to be capable of spotting every weakness, every flaw, every secret.

She was the specter of all Jess’s schoolgirl insecurities, clad in a designer minidress.

“Jessieeeeeeee!” Diana Helston wailed, her distress adding several extra syllables to Jess’s name. She threw her arms around Jess’s stiff form as if they were siblings long separated by war as opposed to, say, distant former classmates who’d listlessly kept track of each other’s lives via social media. That was part of the reason Jess didn’t recognize her right away—the damned filters.

“Diana?” Jess extricated herself from the toned Givenchy-scented arms. “Um, are you OK?”

“ No! ” Diana cried. “I need you to fix this, Jessie, please!”

“It’s Jess,” she reminded her. “And what—what is happening right now? What do I need to fix? How are you even here?”

Was this a prank? Maybe Diana was being catfished by someone pretending to be Jess. Some former classmates could have set this up as an elaborate joke. Jess could imagine some of the girls from her old gym class giggling at something like this.

Diana hiccuped and stepped back. Somehow, her carefully applied makeup wasn’t even smudged. Her molten-penny mane was still shiny and effortlessly beach-wavy. Meanwhile, Jess’s own dark hair was a fright just from standing near a fake ocean environment. “Your grandma told me you were here. We tried calling, but you didn’t pick up. I even called you from Trenton’s work phone and—Did you block us? Is that how you treat potential clients?”

Suddenly, the call from Tillard Pecans made sense…but didn’t.

Diana’s posts frequently popped into Jess’s feed, thanks to some hellishly ironic algorithm. Trenton had made regular appearances on Diana’s Instagram account for years now. She loved dragging Trenton to events for her employer, a country-club-wife-turned-custom-jewelry-designer who seemed to specialize in shiny brag pieces for her equally rich friends. Diana and Trenton were definitely exclusive, and given the way Diana wound herself around his arm when they posed, she planned to keep it that way.

Jess’s business depended almost entirely on referrals. The problem was that no one could know how Jess contributed. Her clients loved that they got full credit for her efforts. It was half the reason they hired her. It was why her company had such a bland name, so her proposal targets wouldn’t ask questions if they saw charges on the credit card bills. So…how did Diana know she was here?

All of this consideration gave Jess time to come up with, “When I’m helping my actual clients? Yes . I wasn’t here for fun. I was working. ”

“Nice otter,” Diana said, then sniffed, chin-pointing at Jess’s newly acquired stuffy.

Jess barely restrained the embarrassed urge to tuck Otter Chaos behind her back. “What can I do for you, Diana?”

“Trenton proposed.” Diana was suddenly sobbing into her left hand, freshly manicured to match her peach-pink dress. Jess couldn’t help but notice those long, delicate fingers were pointedly unadorned—not so much as a Ring Pop.

Suddenly, Diana dragged her into another awkward hug. What was happening? And why was the girl who had terrorized their entire high school class throwing herself into Jess’s arms? Honestly, Jess’s shirt was starting to get uncomfortably damp at the collar. She could not seem to process everything flying at her. Or damn near running her over in a Tesla. “But that’s great!”

“No, he ruined it,” Diana sobbed as Jess gently peeled Diana’s arms from her shoulders. “It was so awful!”

Jess was going to get crow’s-feet from all these confused faces she was making. From social media, Jess knew Diana had been posting inspo hints about color, cut, and carat for months. Trenton didn’t come across as particularly bright, but even he could pick up on hints that sizable. And Diana had obviously taken care with her dress, makeup, and hair that evening, preparing for the perfect engagement photo opportunity.

The survival instinct in Jess’s entrepreneurial reptile brain was triggered, sensing an incoming opportunity. She asked carefully, “Did he send it over text or something?”

“Noooo!” Diana wailed, prompting Jess to step back. For the first time Jess noticed that Diana was holding a glittery pink phone in her right hand. “He took me to that sushi place, Blue Ginger. We had our first date there. I should have known something was up when he’d rented out the private dining room, but he likes to do showy things like that, you know?”

“Well, that’s pretty thoughtful,” Jess suggested, even as her “confused” frown lines shifted to “dubious” frown lines.

“Yeah, and he said all this nice stuff about how beautiful I am and how sweet I am and how he wants to spend the rest of his life with me, but he had to write it down on an index card !” Diana sniffled, dabbing carefully at her eyes so as to not smear her mascara. “Like he couldn’t even remember why he wants to marry me!”

“Oh, honey, maybe he just wanted to make sure that he got everything out right,” Jess told her, taking Diana’s hand. She wasn’t good at this kind of thing, never had been—not even when drunken grooms and resulting bridal rage had demanded it of her. Logistics, the minutia of dealing with dozens of details at once, and the feeling of accomplishment from checking items off a to-do list had always made more sense to her than people—at least, people her own age. It’s why she’d stuck to the planning side of wedding planning, back in her other life.

“And he didn’t even have someone there to take pictures!” Diana dabbed at her eyes carefully with a monogrammed handkerchief as she hissed, “Don’t you always have someone there to take pictures?”

“Most of the time,” Jess admitted. “So what did you say?”

“I told Trenton I would have to think about it! That if he was gonna make such a thoughtless proposal ,” Diana yelled the last two words as if she were making a point. Jess glanced around. Was Trenton in earshot somewhere? Jess’s eyes landed on the sports car’s trunk…

Jess couldn’t believe she was asking herself this, but…was Trenton in the trunk?

Diana lifted her sparkly phone near her face and added, “He obviously wasn’t ready to make a commitment to me. Especially if he’s talking about a Christmas wedding! I’m gonna need at least a year to plan my dream wedding!”

Just then, Jess realized that Diana’s phone screen was live and apparently mid-call with the contact listed as TrentyBear .

“Has Trenton been on speakerphone this whole time?” Jess asked.

Diana threw up her free hand as if Jess were asking a ridiculous question. “Of course.”

“Hi, Jessie.” Trenton’s sheepish voice sounded from the phone. “Nice to, er, talk to you again.”

Jess supposed “awkward speakerphone” was a better position than being in the trunk.

“You didn’t talk to me at Harrow,” she reminded Trenton. “We were in, like, three business classes together. And the not-talking-directly-to-me thing really screwed me on an econ group project, by the way.”

“Well, it looks like I’m going to be fixing that soon,” Trenton mumbled. “Besides, I knew who you were. Everybody always said how smart you were—”

“Trenton, she doesn’t need to know what people said about her back then,” Diana said. “I mean, I didn’t pay any attention to rumors about her in high school.”

“OK, this is getting really weird.” Jess rubbed at her temples. “How do you even know about my business?”

“Oh, Lally Shoemaker got it out of her fiancé after you helped him book that hot-air-balloon thing,” Diana said, waving her off. “I thought it was a little tacky. Too simple, honestly, but Lally was happy with it…”

Jess lifted a brow. It hadn’t been simple at all to arrange a five-course sunset picnic at a thousand feet. And the pictures the photographer had taken from another hot-air balloon were absolutely stunning, which was what Jess suspected had drawn Diana to her business.

“So you have to fix this, Jessie! How am I supposed to tell all my friends and family such a lame engagement story? Without pictures? How is that supposed to build my brand? I’m the face of Helston LuxeGram! My lifestyle philosophy is centered around luxe positivity—external attentiveness and internal affirmation. ‘Luxe’ as in deluxe , exclusive, extravagant, luxurious, luscious. ”

“Please stop saying ‘luxe,’?” Jess told her.

“I can’t even scrape together a decent post with this basic bullshit!” Diana spat. “Trenton is willing to pay any price to make this right.”

She paused to glare down at her phone. “Aren’t you, Trenton?”

Jess heard what she assumed was a muffled affirmative response.

From what Jess had seen of Diana’s social media platforms, they were…respectable, but not exactly influencer-level. Her “Helston LuxeGram” had no sponsorships and no paid posts. It did, however, have plenty of duck-lip photos and a lot of “fit check” reels of Diana showing off that day’s outfits. While not outright offensive, there was nothing special about her content, no hook—just a privileged, pretty girl doing privileged, pretty-girl things. Diana only had a few hundred followers to show for it. And that was why Diana was willing to throw a perfectly decent proposal aside? For the likes?

“Parking-lot confrontation” was not Jess’s normal method of acquiring clients. She’d never done a job where both parties of the proposal were aware she was arranging things. But could she really afford to say no to Diana freaking Helston?

Fifteen years ago, Jess and Diana had been the only students to have family members drop them off at the Wren Hill Day School for Young Ladies, as opposed to household staff. Because neither of them had household staff. Wren Hill was the premier preparatory academy for the city’s old-money princesses. Or at least, the princesses whose families still had old money and the daughters of security-conscious country music stars. Jess had only gotten an admission interview through a collision at the intersection of fate and good manners. Nana Blanche had clipped coupons like a fiend so their decidedly blue-collar family could afford the outrageous tuition.

How Diana’s family had afforded the tuition was the real mystery. Rumors swirling Wren Hill were that the Helston family coffers had run dry several generations ago, long before they achieved the financial or social status they desired. They lived in what, in a BBC drama, might have been called “genteel poverty.” They were held at a distance by matriarchs who could smell new or depleted money from a mile away. (By contrast, Jess they never even let close enough to sniff.) The trick about getting access to those circles was that one could never appear to want to join them. Diana’s family wanted it. A lot. So invitations to the Junior League and the charity boards were not forthcoming due to decades of Helstons trying a little too hard.

And since graduating Wren Hill and the equally tiny and posh Harrow University, Jess had heard rumblings of what the Helstons were willing to do to maintain their carefully polished appearance. The family was plagued by whispers of embezzlement and financial shell games to stretch one more year out of a country club membership committee, to convince a creditor that they were the problem by expecting a payment every month. Nana Blanche thought the Helstons were proof that one should never trust a family made up entirely of redheads, but people around town seemed to look past the stories and extend the Helstons at least the appearance of grace.

Marriage to the Tillard pecan fortune would be Diana’s chance to change her family’s financial fate. And if Jess could wrangle the sort of fee that Trenton’s cowed tone implied, she might scrape together a down payment on her beloved TonyCakes building. The fabled pecan coffers were rumored to be deep.

On the other hand, if Jess failed to help Diana achieve her dream proposal…she didn’t want to think about what that might mean for her reputation. Or her physical safety. She’d seen what Diana was capable of when upset. So Jess needed to plan the most spectacular but subtle, sophisticated but internet attention-grabbing, proposal ever.

Right.

“OK, I’ll do it,” Jess said, watching as Diana’s whole body seemed to relax. A pleasant grin spread slowly over her lovely face, in a manner that made Jess distinctly uncomfortable—a predator temporarily sated. “Come by my office on Monday and we’ll start planning, Trenton. But you should know that my fee is going to be exorbitant.”

“All right,” Trenton agreed. “Anything you want, just to make my DeeDee happy.”

“Thank you, baby,” Diana cooed, suddenly all peaches-and-cream sweetness. “This is a good start.”

“Diana, can you come pick me up now?” Trenton asked. “I really need my car back before work tomorrow. Dad and I are taking the snack-cake people golfing.”

“Oh, all right,” Diana huffed, pressing “End Call” on her phone screen.

“Did you steal his car and leave him at a sushi restaurant?” Jess asked.

“I didn’t steal it. I borrowed it.” Diana scoffed, as if semi-grand-theft-auto were a perfectly normal response. “I needed to get to you, and he would have just slowed me down.” She clip-clopped effortlessly to the driver’s side door and waggle-waved her fingers. “Talk soon! I’m sure you’ll do a great job.”

Jess watched, her mouth hanging open slightly as Diana peeled out of the parking lot.

What had Jess just agreed to? This job sounded like some sort of grim future a Dickensian ghost would have used to scare teenage Jess into better life choices.

Maybe working and living out of a studio apartment wouldn’t be so bad?

No. No, Jess Bricker was not a girl who resigned herself to defeat. She would coordinate this “re-proposal,” which she had never done before, and she would do an amazing job—even if she didn’t know how she felt about re-proposals. It seemed sort of anti-romantic to pull a mulligan on a request to spend a lifetime of love together. Trenton’s effort had sounded thoughtful and sweet to Jess, but she wasn’t a woman with Diana’s tastes and ambitions. And even when Jess didn’t necessarily agree with those ambitions…yeah, she didn’t know where to go with that.

Jess didn’t have a plan for this. She wasn’t sure what to do without a plan.

Well, that wasn’t true.

Her first thought was Jess’s Big Book of Life Plans: Delete all posted evidence of Trenton’s well-intended but half-baked proposal.

It didn’t sound great, even in her head.

This was definitely not going to be a Tulip Package job. This wasn’t even going to be Orchid Package level, which was as expensive as Jess’s proposal packages got. She was going to have to invent a fake flower to describe the cost of this proposal package. The Extinct Blossom Preserved under a Hyperbaric Glass Dome Package.

Jess opened her phone to tell Nana Blanche she was heading home. She found a text consisting of several solid paragraphs already waiting in her Messages folder.

Hi, sweetheart, I got a very strange call from an old school friend of yours, Diana Helston. I know the two of you weren’t close, but she just sounded so frantic that I told her you were at the aquarium. I hope she’s all right. Let me know when you’re coming home.

And then, as almost an afterthought, Nana had added, Sincerely, Blanche Bricker .

Jess rubbed at her temples and took a deep breath.

“Any advice?” she asked Otter Chaos as she dug in her pocket for her car keys. Otter Chaos only stared back silently, its glass eyes shining under the fluorescent streetlights. “Not helpful.”