Emma Lee Maxwell's Facebook Update:

Did you know Seal proposed to Heidi Klum (Queen) in an igloo he had built in a remote part of the Canadian Rockies? Epic, right?

It's official: I am a crap best friend. Not just moderately crappy, but fantastically crappy. Yep. That's me. Emma Lee Maxwell, Charlestonian by birth, Clemson grad, unemployed, aspiring matchmaker, craptastic best friend.

I am stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic on Meeting Street and my best friend's engagement party starts in ten minutes and I am supposed to be giving the opening toast.

"Pardon me" — I say, leaning forward and tapping the taxi driver's shoulder — "are you fixing to hang a left on Charlotte Street?"

He squints into the rearview mirror, fixing me with a weary, yellow-eyed gaze.

"You going to the Gadsden House, right?"

"Yes, sir."

"Meeting to Calhoun to Bay Street."

"Would you mind taking Charlotte to Alexander to Calhoun instead?" I hold his gaze and smile a big, toothy smile, the same smile that won me a place on Clemson's All Girl Cheerleading Team. "I'm due at my best friend's engagement party in nine minutes and I can't be late. I just can't."

His gaze softens.

"I gotchu, girl. Trust in old Charles."

"Thank you, Mr. Charles," I say. "I sure do —"

The car behind us beeps its horn and old Charles takes off like a pony at a polo match. We are flying down Meeting Street, whizzing past John Street, Charlotte Street, Henrietta Street ... and then the car in front of us comes to a sudden, violent stop, crashing into a truck. Old Charles hits the brakes with surprisingly quick reflexes and we lurch to a stop.

The box on the seat beside me — a gift-wrapped silver picture frame I found at George C. Birlant antiques — falls to the ground with a sickening thud. I pick up the box, tears pricking the corners of my eyes when I hear the rattle of broken glass, and check the analog clock on the dashboard.

Eight minutes.

Lexi is counting on me. I can't let her down.

Traffic has stopped moving in both directions. I lean forward in my seat and look down Calhoun. Traffic isn't moving on Calhoun either.

"I am sorry, girlie," Charles says, frowning. "There are more cars than palmetto bugs at a picnic."

"The Gadsden House is only a ten-minute walk from here. If I run, I might-could make it. What do you think, Mr. Charles?"

"What do I think? I think you should go."

I reach into my purse, pull out the full taxi fare and tip, and hand it to old Charles. Then, I grab my purse and my gift box. I climb out of the car and start walking briskly toward Calhoun.

Mr. Charles beeps his horn and I look back.

"Run, girlie. Run like a scalded haint!"

For a moment, I wonder what Miss Belle would say if she could see me running through downtown Charleston like an ill-bred chicken with her head cut off. Miss Belle Watling taught comportment and etiquette at Rutledge Hall, the private all-girls academy I attended for the first seventeen years of my life. Poor Miss Belle passed when I was at Clemson. She was having lunch at The Grill, excused herself, and was discovered a quarter of an hour later, dead on the lavatory, her orthopedic hose around her ankles. A most undignified ending for a stickler for Southern morals and manners, even if she did expire wearing her polka-dot-lined picture hat and double strand pearls.

I best stop thinking about what Miss Belle would do if she saw me hightailing it in heels and start thinking about what Miss Lexi will do if I am a no-show at her engagement party. After all, I introduced my best friend to her fiancé, Cash William Aiken III. It was my first official foray into the highly pleasing world of matchmaking. Just thinking about my success sends a double-espresso-strength shot of adrenaline surging through my veins, and I start running down Calhoun Street, past the old Episcopal church and the Charleston County Public Library.

I clutch my purse and Lexi's gift and run like I'm a scalded haint — whatever that is — until I reach the Saffron Bakery, where the scent of buttery Florentine cookies hangs heavy in the humid evening air. By the light of a flickering gas lantern, I tuck my hair behind my ear and dab the dew from my brow; according to Miss Belle, Southern ladies never perspire. We glisten with dew.

My iPhone was vibrating all the way down Calhoun, so I pull it out of my purse to quickly check my texts.

Text from Madison Van Doren:

Cash's brother is hot — in a Southern Charm meets Duck Dynasty kind of way. Will you introduce me? Do you think he would consider shaving the sideburns and putting on a pair of socks? Where are you, btw? You're late.

Text from Roberta Hearst:

Procreation is highly overrated. Fatigue, nausea, constipation, hairy nipples (WTH?). Give Lexi my love and tell her I would rather be at her engagement party than stuck at home on bed rest. Text me all the deets. I want to know everything.

After typing my responses, I walk the short distance from the bakery to the Gadsden House, a magnificent eighteenth-century carriage house with a brick façade and wide, inviting side porches. It was the perfect setting for an engagement party, which is why I'd suggested it when Lexi's momma phoned asking for my help. Lexi and her people are from Virginia, but Cash is Charleston born and bred.

Ravenel. Calhoun. Middleton. Aiken. Maxwell. Pinckney. Ashley. Barton. Some names have cachet in Charleston, and Aiken is one of them. I know what you must be thinking: You best pray for good weather, Emma Lee Maxwell, because you've got your nose so high in the air you would drown in a rainstorm.

I swear on my Kappa Kappa Gamma key I didn't mean that in a highfalutin, snobby way. It's not about strutting around town thinking your sh*t tastes like sherbet. It's about having roots that go deep into Charleston's sandy soil. It's about the pride that comes from flipping through the pages of Colonial South Carolina: A History and seeing your ancestor listed as a founding father, someone who helped shape your hometown in a significant, lasting way.

I get the same warm-all-over, puffed-up-with-pride feeling when I imagine myself ten years from now, a successful matchmaker, with stacks of leather-bound albums bulging with photographs of perfectly matched couples. Couples I brought together — same as I brought Lexi and Cash together.

Some might argue that being a matchmaker isn't as important as helping to write the Constitution of South Carolina, but I strenuously disagree. No disrespect to my nine-times great-granddaddy, Benjamin Josiah Maxwell, but connecting soul mates is as significant an accomplishment as drafting a state's governing document. Love Matters. Maybe if the world spent more time focusing on the heart and less time focusing on the hate, we wouldn't be in this school shootings/terrorist attacks/gender divide /racial divide/North Korean Missile Scare meltdown. All's I'm Sayin'. Hashtag that.

I walk through the open wrought-iron gates into the courtyard, lit by strands of fairy lights strung overhead and crowded with guests already clutching glasses of champagne. Round tables covered with crisp white linen tablecloths and decorated with bouquets of ivory patience garden roses, white peonies, and white hydrangea in mercury glass...