“She’s great. Think of all those high-maintenance women who Chase dated in college and after. They were such snobs, with their layered gold necklaces and their houses in the Hamptons. Remember that one, Liesel, who came for Thanksgiving and literally did not lift a finger the entire weekend. She said she was saving her manicure! Oh, but she did bring cupcakes. Cupcakes. For Thanksgiving. What is that? I like Penny. She cleared her own champagne glass and I’m sure she would have hand-washed them all if you had allowed her. She’s a doer. Chase said he loves her because she works hard.”

“Really? That’s what he said?” Sometimes Abigail forgot that her children had their own separate relationship as siblings. The fact that not all their communication ran through her was a surprise. “Well, that’s an excellent trait. Her mother seems like a hard worker, too.”

Was I a hard worker back when George proposed? Abigail wondered. She had a job, but she never thought of it as a career. The truth was, by the time she met George, she was getting nervous about whether she would ever get married and fulfill her destiny as a suburban mother and pillar of society. She gave notice at work the day after George put a ring on it. And she never thought to question the wisdom of putting her entire financial future into the hands of George Blakeman, a stockbroker and a gentleman. It was only when Abigail started doing the household finances as a favor to George in the stressful days after 9/11 that she understood what a risk she had taken. The importance of maintaining her earning potential and having her own revenue stream dawned on her at age forty-two, when she discovered the financial foundation beneath them was crumbling. An alarm sounded, calling to the pragmatic side of Abigail.

She sprang into action, hoping it wasn’t too late for her to revive her career, even though she could barely answer the newfangled phones or understand the advanced software that had emerged in her decade absence from the working world. She took a Make Friends with Your Computer class at the YMCA, dressed it up on her résumé like it was a Harvard MBA. She won that development job at Silliman with unrelenting good manners and false confidence. Abigail came to regret not keeping her hand in the working world, even if it was just a part-time gig during the early years of motherhood. But she vowed to make sure that Sarah didn’t make the same mistake. And now Sarah had Penny as a role model as well.