“Don’t worry. We can turn this around,” Paloma offers, and as much as I’ve always resented how much of a hand she’s had in our lives, how there have been so few public family moments that haven’t been in some way curated or manufactured by Paloma, I can’t help but admire her fearlessness. I’d be too scared to interrupt this performance. “The crisis folks are landing tonight. They’ve already sent over their initial plans. We’ll get through this. I promise.”

“Listen to Paloma. She’s never steered us wrong,” my dad says, though I catch his eye over my mom’s head and I know we’re both thinking of that time not too long ago when Paloma suggested that my mother not dispute some tabloid cancer rumors, even though she was perfectly healthy. Why not garner some temporary goodwill in the run-up to the reunion? I’m not saying lie; I’m saying do the I ask for privacy during this difficult time thing and we’ll tip off some paparazzi to take a picture of you with a head wrap.

That was one step too far, even for my mom—you don’t tempt the gods with fake cancer, which would be like pinning it to a vision board. But as we sit here with seven lawyers and my mother facing actual prison time, I start to think about all the small moral compromises we’ve made over the years. Not this college admissions stuff. I’m thinking of the million tiny fibs we told without blinking: how we aged my mother down five years, how we pretend she makes and eats pancakes for interviews, how we gush about my mom and Hudson’s closeness despite their being step-related.

We’ve long assumed the actual truth isn’t relevant.

That’s a publicist’s job, after all. To misdirect the public, allow them to believe we are better people than we actually are. I think of that photograph in my dad’s office again. That it is, or was, us too. I think about how far we’ve strayed from that image of perfection.

“Right,” my mom says, gathering herself and standing up. She nods at the line of lawyers, suddenly businesslike, as if her outburst never happened, as if she can erase it from our minds, Men in Black style. She has switched modes, like a director has yelled from off-set, This time try it strong and proud. “The crisis folks will fix this.”

“Reputation rehabilitation. They do it all the time,” Paloma says. “Look at Martha Stewart. She had a reality show with Snoop Dogg.”

My mother winces. She resents Martha Stewart because back in the early aughts, Martha’s postarrest exclusive People magazine interview bumped my mom’s long-in-the-works Missy cover story. I wonder, idly, if my mother will get her own cover now.

Is this the cycle of celebrity life?