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she said. “This is too much fun to rush through on our first trip.” There was something ominous about hearing this outing described as if it were merely the beginning of a long series of similar outings, but I tried not to think about that. We left the store loaded down with catalogs, Peter trailing behind us, still on his phone.
    I was relieved to note that not choosing anything for the registry hadn’t taken very long—it was barely four o’clock. Peter and I would be well ahead of schedule to meet up with Luisa and Ben.
    I was opening my mouth to thank Susan for her help when she opened her own mouth. “Saks is right here,” she said. “What do you think, Rachel? Do you want to take a quick spin inside and see what they have? I could use a few fresh things for summer.”
    Given that summer in San Francisco seemed to call for the sort of clothing most people wore on Arctic expeditions, I had difficulty seeing how Saks would be the best place to find what she Page 24

    needed, but she was eager to continue shopping. I looked to Peter for help, but he didn’t even notice, intent on his ongoing cell-phone conversation. “Sure,” I said, summoning up a smile that I hoped appeared as eager as Susan’s.
    She linked her arm through mine. “This is such fun. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wished I had a daughter to do girlie stuff with.” Peter had two older brothers, and they were both married, but one lived in London and one lived in Hong Kong—I guessed their wives didn’t afford Susan much in the way of regular daughterly companionship. Nor did I have the heart to warn her just how unfulfilling I was likely to be on the girlie front. I might not be able to describe my tastes in stemware, but I was fairly confident my tastes in apparel did not run to the girlie.
    When Susan had said she could use a few fresh things for summer, she apparently had meant I could use a few fresh things for summer. Fifteen minutes later I was in a dressing room with an assortment of items she believed would look adorable on me. One would expect that someone like her, a respected attorney with a thriving local practice, would favor the tailored and professional, but everything she’d picked was either pastel or flowered, and several of her choices were both. I personally preferred black—it went with everything, which meant I never had to worry about my outfit clashing with the scenery, much less my hair, but I hadn’t wanted to rain on Susan’s shopping parade.
    Unable to decide which pastel-flowered item to try on first, I closed my eyes, spun around once, and selected the first thing my hand touched, which turned out to be the pair of jeans I’d worn into the store. This was clearly an omen, but suppressing that thought I repeated the eyes-closed, spinning-around selection process. This time my hand landed on a pink sheath, nearly identical to the dress Caro Vail had worn the previous night and perfect for a tennis-playing blonde. I sighed and shimmied into it, all too aware that I wasn’t blond and that I sucked at tennis and all other activities requiring eye-hand coordination. Then I opened the dressing room door so Susan could see.
    “I love it!” she cried, clapping her hands together. “Do you love it?”
    I looked around for Peter. He was near the center escalators, still on his phone, but he saw me trying to catch his eye and gave a distracted smile and wave.
    “See? Peter loves it, too,” said Susan.
    She insisted on paying for the dress, signing the credit-card slip with a happy flourish that gave me a bad feeling about what would surely come next. “Now, we need to get you some shoes you can wear with that dress, dear,” she said. A pink dress was bad enough, but pink shoes were more than I could have dreaded. However, within twenty minutes a sales clerk was busily wrapping up my very own pair. All of my efforts to act like the perfect future daughter-in-law had resulted in my future mother-in-law