looked like a supermodel convention. “What are you watching? Did I get the date wrong? Isn’t this book club night?”
“Shhh,” said Millie. “It’s the season premiere of Single Gal.”
“You’re watching a reality dating show?”
“Isn’t it exciting!” said Mom. “This season is Hannah’s turn. You remember me talking about her, don’t you? She’s the one who got her heart broke by that horrible Jeremy.” Charlotte and Millie shuddered at the name like he was a villain from a Dickens novel.
“I thought we were supposed to be discussing Jodi Picoult’s latest book.”
“We are. I mean, we will. Just not tonight. I would have never scheduled book club if I’d known Single Gal was going to be on.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Annie flopped down on her father’s La-Z-Boy chair. “You do know none of this is real. It’s all just a bunch of out-of-work actors trying to get their fifteen minutes of fame.”
Millie turned to look at her. “But, Annie, honey, it’s on live TV, so it has to be real. Can you be a love and get me one of your mom’s chocolate chip cookies?”
Annie suppressed a grumble on her way back to the kitchen. If she’d listened to Pop and Frank Jr., she’d be at her cousin Paul’s house watching baseball. Instead, she was playing fetch-it girl to a bunch of fiftysomething women in the throes of a midlife crisis. She picked up the veggie tray along with the plate of cookies and a full bottle of wine, then placed it on the table in front of the couch.
Charlotte, who Annie had always considered the most pragmatic of her mother’s friends, appeared captivated by the image on the screen. She mechanically reached out to refill her wine glass.
“So the three of you are serious? We’re really not having book club tonight?”
“We’ll try again in a few days. How about that?” said Mom in the same tone she used to use when Annie was five and wanted a kitten. Annie never got the kitten (they already had three dogs and two hamsters), and it looked like she wouldn’t be discussing a book tonight either.
Oh well. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. But have a chocolate chip cookie while you’re at it.
“So what’s going on here?” she asked, biting into what was probably four hundred calories of flour, white sugar, and chocolate. I’m definitely not writing this down in my food journal. “Who is this Hannah?”
“Who is this Hannah?” parroted Millie, her eyes gleaming rabidly. Someone had definitely been hitting the wine bottle. No driving for Millie tonight. Good thing she lived just a few blocks over. Annie could drop her off on her way home. “Just the sweetest woman ever, that’s who! She was on last season’s Single Guy. She made it all the way to the end, but then Jeremy”—Charlotte and Mom interrupted to boo—“picked that horrible Sydney, who no one in America likes, by the way. But it’s okay because Hannah has her own show now.”
“She picks one of these guys here to date, right?”
“Date? If all goes well, it will end with an engagement,” said Mom. “With a big fat diamond ring too.”
“Engaged? After what, a few weeks?”
“Six weeks,” said Charlotte. “Of very intense dating.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Annie sputtered. “How can anyone know someone well enough to marry after just six weeks?”
“Oh, honey, not everyone is like you and Russell,” said Millie. “It could happen.”
The room froze over in silence. Annie’s face went hotter than the time she accidentally swallowed an entire jalapeño hidden in the nachos at the state fair when she was fifteen.
Mom and Charlotte gave her what she liked to call the “Poor Annie” face, and Millie immediately backtracked. “What I meant to say is, of course, you’re right. Marriage isn’t something to be taken lightly.”
Annie took a deep breath and counted to three. “No worries. That was years ago. I’m totally over Russell.” It was the rest of the town who couldn’t stop talking about the failed relationship that had caused her to come crawling back home with her tail between her legs.
“Well of course you are!” said Millie, who seemed to realize that she was only making things worse but didn’t quite know how to stop herself. “You’re dating Walter now and, well, he’s just … darling, isn’t he? He’s nothing like Russell. Nothing at all.”
“Walter is fabulous,” said Charlotte with way too much enthusiasm. “Big reader too. He comes into my store every Saturday morning like clockwork.”
Mom didn’t say anything, which made it more