“Gloria, she’s left.”

“No!” She smacked the counter with the flat of her hand, wincing, then smacked it again. “That little brat,” she said, but in the next moment her lip started to tremble. “Get Grady for me?”

I stepped out of the kitchen and signaled to Dennis. He came forward with long strides. “Get your father,” I said. He started to step into the kitchen—he could see his mother bent over the counter—but I stopped him. “Hurry.”

I led Gloria to the kitchen table and got a juice glass from the cupboard. I poured from a bottle of wine that was open in an ice bucket on the counter. She took several long swallows, then started to cry. “I’m sorry I yelled at you,” she said.

“That doesn’t matter.”

“I know it’s not your fault.”

It had not occurred to me, until that moment, that she might think this was my fault. How could it be? But the timing of events—my arrival on the scene, Bette’s assent to setting a wedding date, our burgeoning friendship, and now this horror: I suppose it was possible my presence had stirred the brew of their lives, however subtly. Gloria finished her wine and handed me the glass. “More, please,” she said, and I rushed to refill it. Grady came in the back door, Dennis behind him, and in a second Grady was kneeling beside his wife’s chair, and she was in his arms, sobbing. “It’s my fault,” she kept saying. “That spoiled little girl.”

Grady shushed her softly and said, “Sometimes things just go haywire.”

Dennis pulled me to his side and we watched his parents. “Where is she?”

“She left. Someone needs to tell Benjamin.”

“I’ll do it,” Dennis said. I stepped onto the back deck to give Gloria and Grady some privacy, and Dennis crossed the lawn toward the bar, where Benjamin stood with a small circle of friends. Dennis led him toward the house, and when they were far from other people, he put his arm around Benjamin’s large shoulders and started talking. Benjamin stopped short, then put a hand over his face. When his hand came down I saw that he was not angry, not upset. He looked calm but weary, and he nodded and took several deep breaths. He even looked around a little, as if hoping to see her, then turned back to Dennis and shook his hand. Together they made their way back up to the house.

Back in the kitchen, there was some discussion of who should be the one to make the announcement. Benjamin volunteered, then Gloria, then Grady—it was as if they were fighting for the unpleasant task, attempting to revive the good manners one expects on a wedding day. But Gloria was a mess—it was clear she’d been crying—and Grady seemed unable to leave her side, even to refill her glass, which I was called on to do a third time. In the end, it was Dennis who stepped onto the back deck and tapped a spoon against a glass to get the crowd’s attention. The rest of us huddled behind him. Fifty pairs of stylish couples and the odd single (including Marse, whom I’d spotted standing with Dennis’s friend Paul) peppered the lawn and the limestone patio, and in a moment all eyes were on Dennis. He held on to the wooden deck railing as he spoke. His voice shook. “Good afternoon,” he said, then cleared his throat and raised his voice. “We are so pleased all of you could make it here today to celebrate with our family.” He paused. It seemed, from his first sentence, that he was going to make a very different speech. “I love my sister,” he said. “I know you love her, too. But let’s face it, she’s an odd duck. And that’s part of what we love about her.” There was some nervous chuckling. “We want you to stay and eat and enjoy the afternoon, please. But I’m sorry to say there is not going to be a wedding.” A gentle gasp passed through the crowd. Benjamin’s parents, who were standing by the swimming pool, clutched each other and his mother put her hand to her mouth. Dennis raised his glass. “To love and friendship,” he said. “In all its forms.”

Dennis and I left the backyard together and walked around the side of the house, out of view, and once we were alone, he bent and put his hands on his knees. “You did great,” I said, and he said, “I thought I was going to vomit. I could kill Bette.” But when he rose up again, he was smiling. “I never said it would be dull, did I?” he said. I laughed, and then he started laughing. He took his keys from his pocket and pulled me toward the front of the house, then stopped: his car was buried several deep in the driveway. He took my hand and we weaved through the cars until we reached the far side of the driveway, and then we ducked under a ficus and emerged onto the neighbor’s lawn.

“Should we leave your parents?” I said.

“They’re fine. They’ll host.” He loosened his tie, and, not letting go of my hand, pulled me up to the neighbor’s front door. When a man answered, Dennis said, “I’m sorry to bother you, Mr. Costakis, but I was wondering if I might borrow a car.”

“Your sister’s on the lam, is she?” said Mr. Costakis. I guessed that he’d been spying and had seen her flee from the house. He chewed tobacco and ran a hand through his slick gray hair. “I should drop by for some grub.”

“Yes, it’s all very amusing,” said Dennis.

Mr. Costakis handed Dennis his keys. “Bring it back with a full tank,” he said, then extended a hand to me. “I’ve heard about you. You’ve taken a bite of our boy’s heart.”

I blushed. “Nice to meet you.”

We drove away then, and with the windows down I could hear the noise from Dennis’s family’s backyard, and from that distance it sounded no different from your average party, with glasses clinking and conversations humming. “Where are we going?” I said to Dennis.

“Wherever we want. ” He reached for my hand and brought it to his lips. He seemed content, driving through the early evening in a strange car. We took the highway north to Rickenbacker Causeway, then paid the toll and crossed onto Virginia Key, past the windsurfers off the narrow strip of beach, past the line of palm trees that shaded the sand, then over a second bridge onto Key Biscayne. We drove to the far tip of the key, then turned around and drove back. The sun was starting to set over downtown, and the buildings—the city seemed large to me then, though it would double in breadth and height and population during the time I lived there—reflected the pink-orange light. The water was dark blue, spitting whitecaps in the wind, and as we left the causeway behind I breathed deeply, inhaling the smell of the ocean. We wound down Bayshore Drive past Vizcaya, where we’d spent a magical night under the stars soon after meeting—it seemed a long time ago, even then—past Mercy Hospital, where almost every room had a bay view, past the coral rock houses of Coconut Grove and Biscayne Bay Yacht Club, where Dennis’s parents were members and one day we would be, and past Scotty’s and Dinner Key Marina and Dennis’s old elementary school. I had learned my way around, but I didn’t know how or when it had happened.

I suggested we head to the Hungry Sailor, a dark bar in downtown Coconut Grove where Marse and Bette and I had found ourselves many nights among a crowd of regulars, under walls ringed with colored Christmas lights. We parked, and Dennis led me up to the rooftop, where patio tables were scattered on tar matting overlooking Grand Avenue. Dennis ordered a round of margaritas and looked down on the crowded street. A rickshaw passed, carrying a tourist couple who hooted with laughter as the driver dipped and circled to entertain them. On the corner, a woman with a high Afro handed out fliers, and down the block a group of kids sat in a circle on a cement patio. Dennis took my hand and sighed. “Good Lord, my sister,” he said. I saw that he cared enough about his sister not to care much about the ruined wedding.

The margaritas were tangy and cold. I let my shoes drop and propped my feet on the low wall of the rooftop, and I held Dennis’s hand. The sun went down, and it grew a little chilly. Dennis put his coat around my shoulders and ordered another round. It seemed we were celebrating after all. Dennis pointed below us, to a mannequin in the window of a lingerie shop across the street—but then I saw that she wasn’t a mannequin at all. She was a live person, wearing red bikini underwear and a lacy pink robe, her legs tucked beneath her in a white wicker love seat, her chin propped on one hand. “What a job!” I said.

“Boring as hell,” said Dennis.

“Some people love to be watched.”

Dennis was looking at me. “When it’s our turn, you won’t run.”

“No,” I said. I knew that all I had to do was turn and meet his eyes. I knew that if I did this, he would sink to one knee and take off his college ring and slide it onto my finger, where it would feel as heavy as a stone. But maybe because we were living a stolen evening, an evening allotted for another activity entirely, or because my love for him raged so wildly that I felt it throbbing in my teeth and pressing against my lungs, I did nothing but sip my drink. After a while, the model’s shift ended. She stood and stretched and tied her robe around her waist, yawned, and walked into the fluorescent innards of the store.

Looking back, it seems that the whole episode, from meeting Dennis to marrying him, went by in a blink. When Dennis did propose—kneeling, on the stilt house dock where we’d met—I believed my love for him was strong. Now, though, I know it was a blip, a farce. A thousand times, my love might have dampened instead of swelled. I had no idea then what would happen to my love, what nourishment it would receive, how mighty it would grow. I thought: I love him. And so, as if it were the only answer I could give, the only answer available to me, I said yes.

We married in Atlanta, in the Baptist church I’d attended as a child. I wore an empire-waist gown with lacy cap sleeves and satin Mary Janes with chunky heels. I was so stunningly, stupidly happy that I remember little outside of what is frozen in photographs: Dennis’s grip over mine as we cut the three-tiered cake; my mother spreading my veil and my father pumping Dennis’s hand; Grady extending his arm in a toast; me posing on the chapel steps with my mother on one side and Bette and Marse on the other. Back in Miami, Dennis’s parents threw us a reception at their yacht club, and then Dennis and I spent a week in the Keys, hopping from island to island in his father’s boat and camping on shallow beaches. One night we woke to the sight of hundreds of glowing anemones drifting by. In the morning, dozens had washed ashore and lay sickly at the foot of our tent. Dennis gave me a book of Wallace Stevens poems with certain pages dog-eared, and sometimes we read the poems to each other before falling asleep.