Celeste didn’t take the jab too seriously; her parents were guilty of a gross double standard. Her younger sister Paulina dropped out of school to run around Los Angeles and Europe, but because she was dating men with titles and was written about in Town & Country and Vogue, she was deemed “good for the Pavlin name.” Celeste’s descent into academic bohemia . . . not so much. As for Elodie, who had worked in the family business since her undergraduate years at Columbia, she now seemed to be pursuing a master’s degree in kissing their father’s ass.

After a while, both her parents stopped asking—aside from Thanksgiving and winter break—when she was coming to visit.

So Celeste was surprised one afternoon to return to her apartment to find an urgent answering machine message from her father summoning her to New York. She called him at the office, expecting that her usual excuses would work. But Alan was having none of it.

“This is non-negotiable. All three of you girls will be at this event.”

“Paulina’s coming in for it?” she said.

“She is indeed,” her father said.

And then the conversation took an even stranger turn: “And please bring your young man friend. We’d like to meet him.”

This left her speechless. She didn’t know how her father even knew of her boyfriend; Elodie must have mentioned it. She knew she shouldn’t have told her! But she was lulled into a false sense of safety when Elodie had uncharacteristically confided in her. Her wallflower sister had fallen in love with some guy who worked at the ad agency the company used. In their last few phone conversations, she’d been like a different person, bubbly and chatty. Celeste was happy for her, and when Elodie asked about her own dating life, she told her the truth: She’d met someone.

His name was Brodie Muir, a recent Villanova law school graduate toiling at a small Center City firm. Tall with dark hair, he’d been the only other person at a midnight showing of the movie In the Name of the Father. They both left the theater sobbing and ran into each other in the lobby. When they began chatting about the film, it was the first time she missed New York City. If they’d been in Manhattan, they could have gone to an all-night diner and talked about the movie. But since there was absolutely nothing open in the suburbs at that hour, they reached an awkward moment when the usher kicked them out of the theater and they walked to their respective cars in the parking lot.