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was so startled she almost forgot to take a sip of her drink. “Thank you.”
    “He’s a great guy,” Elise said. “And even though I don’t talk to him that much, I can tell how happy he is.”
    Ilsa didn’t know what she’d expected, but it certainly wasn’t this. She’d thought Elise might work reminders into the conversation that she’d been in the picture first and had known Grif the longest. But instead, she seemed to be going out of her way to make Ilsa feel comfortable. Ilsa’s fingers released their death grip on the napkin.
    “I was kind of nervous to meet you,” she blurted. Her confession was a split-second decision; she didn’t want to chat with Elise about banal topics like the weather and traffic. She wanted to get to know the woman who had been so important to Grif, to take her measure, and she sensed the way to make it happen would be to reveal something of herself first.
    “Really? I was a little nervous, too,” Elise said. “Why were you?”
    “I guess because you and Grif were together so long,” Ilsa told her.
    “Yeah, I can see that,” Elise said. She took another sip of her drink.
    “So why were you nervous?” Ilsa asked.
    “A bunch of different reasons,” Elise said. “I haven’t seen Grif since we broke up. And I know he’s moved on—that you’re the reason he’s moved on. I wanted to like you, even though it feels kind of weird for us to meet.”
    “It does, doesn’t it?” Ilsa said. “But not as weird as I expected.”
    Elise nodded slowly. “Yeah. . . . So, Grif said you’re a veterinarian?”
    “That’s how we met, actually,” Ilsa said. “He was walking his dog and it got hurt. . . . I just happened to be nearby. And you’re a graphic artist, right?”
    “Yup. I love it—mostly because I can work anywhere,” Elise said. “It more than makes up for the fact that a few of my clients are completely nuts, including the one I’m meeting with tomorrow.”
    “Same here,” Ilsa said. “Yesterday I had to argue with a woman who didn’t want us to shave her show poodle’s stomach to do surgery. She finally ended up bringing in her groomer to do it. And she stood over him the whole time, criticizing him. I was tempted to give her some of the anesthesia I was using on her dog.”
    Elise laughed. “It probably would have been a favor to both of them.”
    There was a brief silence. Ilsa saw Elise glance down and suddenly focus on something as her expression grew serious. She followed her gaze and realized Elise was staring at her engagement ring. Ilsa blurted out a question that surprised even her: “Do you mind if I ask—are you dating anyone?”
    “Not seriously,” Elise said, but then she smiled. “There’s this guy . . . It’s kind of funny, actually. Our grandmothers are friends and they’re trying to set us up. We’ve talked on the phone, and I think we might actually go out to dinner next time he comes to San Francisco. My grandma keeps threatening to needlepoint me a pillow that says, ‘I told you so.’ She doesn’t actually needlepoint, but she said she’ll hire someone to do it so she can rub it in.”
    “She sounds funny.”
    “She is,” Elise said. “Grif always said—” She cut herself off and took a sip of her white wine.
    “It’s okay,” Ilsa said. “What did Grif say about your grandma?”
    But she never heard the answer. Something made her look up just as the door of the bar swung open. She slid out of the booth as Grif hurried toward her, and in that moment she registered something: Grif wasn’t glancing over at Elise, even though he hadn’t seen her in months—since the day of their breakup. His eyes were locked on Ilsa.
    She felt that flutter in her chest, the one she’d experienced the first time she met him, and every single time she’d seen him since then. She’d been so busy comparing herself to Corrine, telling herself she wasn’t her sister, that she’d forgotten the most important thing of all: