Audrey looked toward Frances’s house. It was new, hideous. But inside there were framed articles about its architect hanging on the walls. Audrey’s Larry said it looked as if someone had taken a sledgehammer to a perfectly good house and scattered the bits.

“Is someone sick?” Audrey said.

Frances had four children, each with their own separate “module” for a bedroom. Who knew what they would get up to when they were teenagers.

“No.” Frances was holding one red shoe. “My father showed up.”

“Your father?”

“I got a hold of Elinor but I couldn’t reach—Oh.”

It was Sue, checking her lipstick in the rearview as she pulled in, veering away just in time.

“You nearly killed us!” Audrey felt a sort of wildness herself now, a hysteria she would for once like to give in to.

Sue got out of the car in a new suit, baby blue plaid.

The suit calmed Audrey. She’d helped Sue on the phone last week decide about it. “It’s darling,” she said, plucking the sleeve before they kissed. “Bridge is off, I think, Suzie.”

“What are you talking about?”

They never canceled Friday bridge. And it had only been cut short that once, two years ago at Audrey’s house, when Larry had called home and told her the president had been shot in Dallas.

“Bridge is definitely off! Everything’s off!” Frances said. She was tearing out the grimy insole of her red pump.

“Her father’s here,” Audrey said.

Sue looked around for an unfamiliar car. “How’d he get here?”

Of all the questions to ask.

“I don’t know,” Frances said.

“The train? A lift? Did he bring luggage?”

“Sue,” Audrey said.

“No.” Frances turned toward the house. “No luggage. I have to go in now. He’ll be watching. You all should go.”

“We’re staying,” Sue said. “Aren’t we, Auds?”