“Matt?”

“My ex-husband,” she says. “He never wanted to come. He said he was okay doing IVF but then would look at the medications in the fridge and say, This is all so expensive. And it was. But I also know it was his way of telling me he wanted it to happen naturally. He wanted the child to light up inside me like a firefly. He wanted it to be so obvious, so natural, that no doubt had any room to creep in.”

But they had appointments. Phoebe had polyps. She had operations.

“Then the egg-stractions,” she says.

“Egg-stractions?”

“Technically, they’re called retrievals. But they should be called Eggstractions, right? I mean, come on. It’s just sitting right there.”

The Eggstraction, she joked with her husband. Sounds like a horror story someone should write.

“But Matt wouldn’t joke about it with me. He was just like, Oh God, who would read that story?”

“A lot of people would.”

The hotel is visible now. The bridal brunch is waiting inside. Phoebe takes small, slow steps.

“Here we go,” Gary says.

“Not ready to talk to people again?”

“It’s just been a lot of family,” Gary says. “I’m supposed to be having coffee with them right now, but there are only so many times I can listen to Marla list off the price of various houses in the neighborhood.”

“Marla’s pretty funny,” Phoebe says.

“She really is,” Gary says. “Even though I know she can be a lot for people.”

“A lot can be okay. It can be good. It’s better than nothing.”

It’s what Phoebe longed for in the silence of her house growing up. Her father was not a loud person, and neither was she, but she wanted to be. She longed for a lot of noise in the kitchen, for clanging pots, for the sounds of people laughing by the fire.

“I used to dream of having one of those big families in nineteenth-century British novels,” Phoebe says.

“I thought you dreamed of being an orphan?”

“Well, if I couldn’t be an orphan, then I wanted a big messy family,” she says. “Like in Pride and Prejudice or something.”

“I’ll just nod and pretend I read it, too.”

“It’s one of those books that are about the big family, and what the big family is up to, and how the big family changes over time, and all the little ways the members of the big family irritate each other but also love each other.”

“I see,” Gary says. “So I’ll just pretend that I’m a character in an Austen novel I’ve never read, and all will be well.”

“Totally healthy,” Phoebe says.

He holds open the hotel door like a butler. “The ladies await, Maid of Honor.”

She blushes. So Lila told him.

“GARY, YOU’RE LATE for your Bourbon Bubbler,” Lila says as soon as they walk into the conservatory.

“What’s a Bourbon Bubbler?” Nat asks.

“And how do we get one?” Suz asks.

“Sorry,” Lila says. “It’s a massage for men only.”

“How can a massage be only for men?” Marla asks.

“That’s like when they tried to market wine just for bros,” Nat says. “As if there are some grapes that are manlier than other grapes.”

“Wine for bros,” Juice repeats, and laughs.

“I for one can only feel okay about being rubbed down if it’s done with literal poison,” Gary says, and the women laugh.

“Are you ready for some very relaxing poison, bro?” Juice asks, pretending to be a masseuse.

“Oh come on. It’s a classic bourbon sugar scrub,” Lila says. “People have been doing it for … years.”

Lila kisses Gary goodbye. Every kiss they have in public seems grander than the last—designed to produce applause. Phoebe feels her stomach lurch. Maybe she’s hungry. Maybe she needs a big breakfast, like the kind she used to order for herself when hungover. Phoebe sits down at the table of women, looks at the menu, while the bride tries to order a coffee.

“That’s all I am trying to do here,” Lila says to the waiter. He wears a name tag that says, RYUN, DRINK CONCIERGE.

“Oh, we have free coffee in the samovar,” Ryun says.

“What’s a samovar?” Juice asks.

Phoebe imagines that when Ryun is not being asked, What’s a samovar, he’s spending a lot of time trying to explain why his name is spelled with a U and not an A.

“It’s that jug of coffee over there,” Ryun says, pointing to a table.

“Right, but I don’t want free coffee from the samovar,” Lila says. She points to the menu. “I want this coffee.”

“But it’s the same coffee,” Ryun says, smiling. “The only difference is that this coffee is just six dollars more.”

“Look, I am just trying to order the coffee that’s on the menu here. Can you please give me that coffee?”

Juice and Marla give each other eyes across the table. Ryun nods.

“Right, okay, I understand,” he says, and then goes to get a cup of coffee out of the samovar. When he brings it over to Lila, the cup wobbles violently on the saucer.

“Thank you,” Lila says.

Lila is the only one at the table not embarrassed.

“Here is your binder, Maid of Honor,” Lila says.