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cut Wilma’s diamond is, and when Jack is going to give it to me, and how I could have missed the subtle signs that he had this up his sleeve. Because there must have been subtle signs. There always are.
    Do you think his comment that Marriage is for the Asinine was a subtle sign?
    Me neither.
    “Anyway,” Wilma is saying, “if Jack ever knew I’d let this slip to you—”
    “I promise I won’t tell him.”
    “Won’t tell who what?”
    Startled by the voice behind me, I turn to see Jack standing there: boxer shorts, bad breath, bedhead…
    Yes. There he is. The man I love. The man who loves me.
    The man who apparently has a stone concealed somewhere in this minuscule apartment and is trying to throw me off his trail with all this convincing talk about only the Asinine getting married.
    “Who are you talking to?” he asks.
    “Your mother,” I admit, gazing adoringly at him, wondering how I ever could have thought I had to let him go. I didn’t have to let him go to find out that he’s mine. He always was. He always will be.
    “ My mother?” He frowns. “You’re keeping secrets from me with my mother?”
    “Secrets?”
    “You just said you won’t tell me something.”
    “Not you,” I say as Wilma makes a warning noise in my ear. “We were talking about someone else.”
    “Who?” he asks dubiously.
    “You mean whom,” I amend, just to buy time.
    He grits his teeth. “Whom are you talking about with my mother, Tracey?”
    “Maybe it actually should have been ‘who’ when you phrase it that—”
    “Tracey, come on! Who?”
    “Your father.”
    Judging by Wilma’s muffled groan, I’m guessing that wasn’t a good choice. But it’s too late now.
    “Your mother said something not very nice about your father and she doesn’t want me to tell him.”
    I wait for him to ask what she said, but he doesn’t. He merely rolls his eyes and says, “What else is new? And since when do you and my father chat?”
    True. I’ve only met the man twice.
    “There’s coffee,” I say brightly, to distract him, and I point at the counter in our kitchenette.
    Our Kitchenette. That’s right. Ours. Forever.
    “I’ll be off the phone in a second. Unless you want to talk to your mother?”
    “Not if she’s on the warpath against my father again.” Jack pads over to the coffeepot, yawning and stretching.
    I feel gloriously giddy. I’m getting married. I’m getting married!
    Just as soon as Jack asks me.
    Which, I’m assuming, will be soon. Won’t it? At least by tonight. Or tomorrow, at the latest.
    Of course by tomorrow, I reassure myself, while making forced, self-conscious conversation with his mother for a few more minutes. Jack is listening in now, no doubt ready to pounce on anyone who dares slander his father’s good name.
    Before the weekend is out, Jack will pop the question, I’ll accept, and it will be full steam ahead to the wedding.
    I can hardly wait.
    I wonder if it’s too late to throw together something for three hundred guests, give or take, in October?

Part II
    Sweetest Day, Beggar’s night

Chapter 4
    P reviously on Lifestyles of the Poor and Single, Wilma Candell inadvertently—or not—revealed that her son, Jack, had a diamond and would be getting engaged any second.
    Presumably to me.
    That was over a month ago.
    Hearing Jack’s key in the lock, I quickly conceal the dog-eared October issue of Modern Bride— which I purchased back on Labor Day weekend an hour after Jack’s mother spilled the beans—inside this week’s People and stick it in the center of a towering stack of freebie magazines he’ll never touch.
    Here comes the groom, I think.
    I think this with just a pinch of irony, considering that forty days and forty nights have passed since his mother told me that an engagement was imminent.
    Actually, I think it with a dollop of irony and a side of frustration.
    What’s a girl to do when the man she loves is keeping proposal plans and diamonds all to himself?
    All