The Six Rules of Maybe

think about it. A heart inside my own body.”
    “Jeez, Juliet,” I said. I hoped and hoped again that Jitter with his real beating heart couldn’t hear anything in there. He needed to know he was one hundred percent loved and wanted.
    “Beautiful creepy,” Hayden said. “Fantastic creepy. Maybe not even creepy at all creepy.”
    “I’m hot,” Juliet said. She lifted her hair up from her neck. “I’m going to change.”
    Juliet walked upstairs as we all stood below. It was perfect, really. Juliet above us, Juliet away, us gawking and wanting more. It seemed wrong that she was taking Jitter with her. He should have been there with us instead, with me and Hayden and Mom.
    Hayden looked at us. His eyes pleaded.
    “Pregnant women are very emotional,” Mom said.
    *
    “It’s the couples who are ordering wedding invitations and whoargue over everything that get me,” Mom said. Her cheeks were rosy with wine, and her voice was lively at dinner. We sat around the table, Zeus right by my chair, looking up at me. I really liked his furry chin. It was so small and serious.
    “This one groom got outraged over an embossed rose. Outraged!” Mom went on. “A really ugly peach rose. He stormed out. ‘Just because your parents are paying for everything, I don’t get to exist.’”
    “And they lived happily ever after,” Juliet said.
    “He was not angry about the rose,” Dean Neuhaus said. He was under the impression that we would not be able to figure this out ourselves, not without his help. It was lucky we could function in the world without him.
    “The in-laws’ll be at that guy’s house every night for Sunday dinner,” Hayden said.
    “I know!” Mom said. “Right?” She looped pasta on her fork but the whole enterprise slipped off and she had to try again. Her bra strap was showing and she hadn’t noticed. She was enjoying herself.
    “He better run for his life,” I said, though only part of me was paying attention. I kept thinking about tomorrow. Saturday. Saturday and Juliet and Buddy Wilkes’s note. I’d gotten rid of it, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. He wouldn’t have heard back from her, and maybe he would try again, then. There had to be something I could do.
    “In two years, your business will be closing its doors,” Dean Neuhaus said. “Even wedding invitations will be electronic.”
    “I don’t believe it,” Mom said. “You can’t tell me that. There’s something special about real paper, real ink. A message written by hand? It has an importance, permanence .”
    Dean scoffed. “Shredder? Recycling …” He was counting his points on his fingers.
    “What if a message is not destroyed but is saved forever in a small cedar box?” Hayden said. He really was a romantic. Who was a romantic anymore? Even his hands were romantic hands. Long, strong fingers. The kind that might carve something out of wood for his beloved, that cedar box, something everlasting.
    “A letter is a gift,” Mom said. “It’s tactile. Intimate.”
    “An e-mail’s about as passionate as a Post-it note,” Hayden said.
    “A handwritten letter—one heart to one heart,” Mom said. They were both nodding. Juliet looked amused.
    “Or to two hundred fifty, depending on who’s on the guest list,” Dean Neuhaus broke a breadstick in half. God, it must have gotten tiring being him.
    “A letter means something could happen,” I said.
    Hayden looked at me. “ Yes . Yes.”
    Mom nodded. “A letter is about possibilities.” But then she blushed. Possibilities . The blush already in her cheeks now spread down her neck and into the collar of her shirt. A guilt blush from reading the contents of that note. Maybe we both should have been blushing.
    “Two years, stationery stores … gone.” Dean Neuhaus made a slash in the air with his manicured hand.
    “Nonsense,” Mom said. Dean Neuhaus raised his eyebrows. He was that kind of man—you were stepping out of place if you disagreed with him. “A letter is an art form,” Mom said. “Art forms tend to last. People build museums for art forms.”
    “Your scrapbooks are an art form,” Juliet said. “God, I used to love watching you cut and glue and arrange. Show Hayden.”
    “You did? You liked that? They’re silly maybe,” she said.
    “Show him,” Juliet said. It was funny how sentimental she was about our past life suddenly. She had never seemed to care before.Before, all she wanted to do was to leave us. Now she seemed