Chapter 8: The Brunch on the Lawn

Melinda had photographed the text with her own phone before she went up to bed.

She didn't know what it meant yet. She only knew a man who says he was at home doesn't need his front panel repainted.

By eleven the next morning the white tent on the lawn was full.

There were round tables, a string quartet, and sixty guests with champagne flutes. A banner at the front said Crane Estates Spring Preview.

Leland had put her in a pale blue dress. It was her size and her color, and she hadn't chosen it.

Bianca stood at the head table in a cream suit.

A thin pearl bracelet circled her left wrist, above the black brace on the right.

Melinda saw it from forty feet away, and her whole body went cold.

She crossed the grass with a glass of water in her hand.

"Bianca," she said. "That bracelet."

Bianca looked down and smiled.

"Isn't it lovely? Leland found it for me. I mean, you lent it to me for the recital, Mindy. You said I should keep it safe."

She said it in a warm, rattled rush, with her head tilted to the people near them.

"I didn't," Melinda said.

"Oh, Mindy. You don't remember. It's okay."

Melinda heard the table go quiet.

A man in a navy blazer coughed into his napkin. A woman looked at her husband and looked away.

Leland came across the tent, easy, with his arm already out for her shoulder.

"Mindy, darling, there you are. Everyone, my wife."

He steered her toward the little stage, and the quartet stopped playing.

He tapped the microphone.

"Friends, thank you for coming. Eleven weeks ago I thought I'd lost this woman, and today she's standing in her own garden."

The guests clapped. A few of them wiped their eyes.

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