They walked west, passing the shuttered restaurant Coffee Shop. Sanjay stopped at a hot dog vendor to buy a bottle of water. At five in the evening, it was still close to eighty degrees out—the warmest day of spring so far.

“Why didn’t you come by my graduation party?” he said.

She hadn’t told him about the Pavlin & Co event.

Growing up, Gemma never discussed her relationship with the Pavlins, not even with her closest friends. It was a habit she’d gotten into because of Nana’s attitude toward her maternal family. It was an unspoken rule that they didn’t ever acknowledge that side of Gemma’s life. As she grew up, hungry to know more about the mother she’d lost, she learned to swallow her curiosity. It became almost a superstition not to mention the Pavlins—like avoiding stepping on the cracks in the sidewalk. In contrast, her grandparents’ house was a shrine to her father. His photos were on every flat surface in the place, along with his high school soccer trophies, plaques for his honor roll in college, and the awards he won in advertising. Because she was raised in that environment, it was like she was one hundred percent Maybrook.

Sanjay was one of the few friends of hers in whom she’d confided about her actual family background, and only then because she’d had one too many glasses of wine at her birthday dinner. She instantly regretted it. She hated to think of Sanjay googling her famous mother, seeing the photos of her in the Pavlin & Co ads that were plastered all over the city—all over the country—thirty years ago. She was afraid he’d look at her differently. But to his credit, he never even brought it up again except when he read her sales pitch for the investors. He’d suggested she include it in her bio, and she hadn’t listened to him. Considering the call from Jacob Jabarin’s office just now, maybe she should have.

“I’m sorry. I had a . . . thing I had to take care of.”

“You should have been there to celebrate with everyone. Graduation is a big deal, you know.” He shook his head. “Sometimes I feel like you go out of your way to avoid being happy.”

Gemma couldn’t help but think this was a dig at how she messed up their relationship.

They walked in silence until they reached her building.

“I think you were right about leaning into my family connection more in my business plan,” she said, stopping on the front stoop to fish her keys from her bag. “But it would have to be done in the right way.”