“And when I e-mail you, the messages get bounced back. Is your e-mail on the fritz, too?”

E-mail, too, had been strangely empty of late. I might have to learn how to stop throwing my communications gadgets at unyielding objects.

“Then I called the hotel this morning, and you grunted and hung up on me.”

“That wasn’t you. That was the wake-up call. And I didn’t grunt.”

“You grunted.”

“I didn’t grunt. Anyhow, that’s neither here nor there.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means, you’ve been totally AWOL. In ‘negotiations’ with Abigail. Nothing requires that much negotiating.”

He unfolded his arms and ran both hands through his hair. “Do you want to know what I was really negotiating?”

“Yes. No. I guess.”

“I-we-my company, has bought another company. It was going to be a surprise.”

“Why? Why did it have to be a surprise?”

“Because they’re based in New York.”

“So?”

“So, now I can move to New York.”

“Why would you want to move to New York?”

“Are you a complete idiot?” he asked through gritted teeth.

“If that’s an apology for being missing in action for the last four days, it’s not a very good one.”

“Rachel,” Peter said, speaking slowly and evenly, clearly struggling to keep his temper in check. “I want to move to New York so that I can be with you.”

“Why would you want to be with me when you’re so busy canoodling with Abigail-”

“-I thought I was sashaying with Abigail-”

“-or is she moving to New York, too?”

He took a deep breath. “Rachel, Abigail is not moving to New York. She’s going to stay in San Francisco and run everything there.”

“Well, good for her. I’m sure everyone in San Francisco will be very impressed by all of her new jewelry.”

“Now what are you talking about?”

“You. Buying Abigail jewelry. Jane and Luisa saw you on Newbury Street. Then we all saw you in Copley Place. Coming out of Tiffany’s. And making out.”

“Rachel, we weren’t making out,” he started to say, but then he made an odd choking noise. “We weren’t making out,” he said again, but he made the choking noise again. Then he started to laugh.

“This is funny?”

He was laughing too hard to speak. He just nodded.

“You really think this is funny.”

“Absolutely,” he managed to get out between spasms of hilarity.

“That’s it. I’m out of here.”

“It’s your suite.”

“Fine. You’re out of here.” I threw open the closet door and pulled out his suitcase.

“Rachel. Abigail is gay.”

“What?” I asked from the closet, where I was busily pulling his clothes off hangers.

“Abigail is gay.”

I stopped pulling clothes off hangers. “Really?”

“Really.”

Suddenly I remembered Luisa’s comment from the previous day, her suggestion that maybe we were on the wrong track. Was this what she’d meant?

“But then why were you buying her jewelry? And making out with her?”

“We weren’t making out. I’m pretty sure that what you saw was an innocent kiss on the cheek, viewed from the wrong angle. And we weren’t buying her jewelry.”

“Then why were you hitting every jewelry store in town?”

“Abigail was-Abigail has great taste. She was helping me.”

“Helping you what?” I demanded, spinning around to face him, hands on hips.

“Oh, crap. This isn’t how I wanted to do this.”

“Do what?”

“Look, Rachel.” He nodded to the Gypsies, who’d been watching our exchange in awed silence. “I had a whole speech planned.”

“Just break up with me already!”

“You’re impossible!”

“No, you’re impossible!”

“You’re more-never mind.”

He sank onto one knee and the Gypsies began to play.

“Rachel. Will you marry me?”

Epilogue

I said yes, of course. I wasn’t a complete idiot.

And the Gypsies played, and Peter took the lid off one of the platters with a flourish. “Whoops. Wrong one,” he said, when it was revealed to be a plate of burritos. He tried a couple more before hitting on the right platter. “This is the one. I thought I’d marked it.”

The ring was beautiful, a sparkling diamond solitaire surrounded by small rubies. It slid onto my ring finger as if it belonged there, as if it would always be there. We asked the Gypsies to come back in a couple of hours, and I had my hot bath, but with company. Peter was particularly handy when it came to soaping the hard-to-reach spots.

The phone rang while we were in the bath, but we were too busy to answer it. When I listened to the message the following morning, it was the Caped Avenger, calling to let me know he was backing out of the takeover. I hadn’t expected that it could possibly go forward since its chief architect, Adam Barnett, was facing a long prison term for multiple counts of murder and assault. Nor was he likely to be having children anytime soon. But it was nice to know that Whit was officially calling an end to the proceedings. At our next department staff meeting, Stan Winslow announced himself to be delighted by the lengths I’d gone to to protect my client’s interests and excited by the batch of new recruits who would be joining Winslow, Brown from Harvard Business School upon graduation. He also made promising noises about my prospects at the next partnership election. Scott Epson dashed out of the meeting as soon as it ended, looking sheepish and mumbling something about an incredibly important meeting for which he was already late.

Grant Crocker would be joining Adam Barnett in prison. But he managed to secure a place on the business school’s much lauded list of prominent alumni, although he was a departure from the Fortune 500 CEOs and U.S. Treasury Secretaries who made up most of the list. Of course, he hadn’t actually graduated from Harvard Business School, but perhaps he could finish up his degree through some sort of correspondence course.

Sara returned to class, determined to graduate in June but spending every minute of spare time she had working with Brian Mulcahey at Grenthaler Media. She and Brian had already asked me to help them identify ways to finance Sara’s acquisition of another ten percent of the company. She’d learned the hard way that securing majority ownership was the only way she could be sure of never losing control of the company. And it looked like her white knight would be none other than Whitaker Jamieson. Sara expressed doubts, but I assured her that he could be quite useful when handled properly.

Jonathan Beasley, meanwhile, had been cleared of everything but writing very inappropriate letters to a student. Last I heard, he was on “sabbatical.” I could only hope that his time off included some intensive therapy and a remedial course in creative writing. And I’d introduced Gabrielle LeFavre to some contacts at a couple of boutique investment banking firms. With some coaching, I was confident she would secure a position that would be well suited to both her objectives and her borderline personality.

Peter and I made it to the final dinner of the reunion weekend, albeit a bit late. I’d suggested that he invite Abigail to come along. It was a stretch, given that Luisa was on the rebound and lived on a different continent, but it seemed worth a try. Luisa was too self-contained to display any visible interest in Peter’s colleague, but Emma told me that she saw them exchanging e-mail addresses at the end of the evening. Jane placed her hands protectively over her abdomen as Hilary and O’Connell flirted with each other. Hilary had already announced that she would need to be spending a lot of time in Boston to finish her book. “You have six months,” Jane warned, “before the guest room turns into a nursery.”

As for Emma, she announced over dessert that she was moving into Matthew’s apartment in Boston. I turned to her, saddened that my best friend would be living in a different city. “Don’t worry,” she said. “It’s just a shuttle flight away.”