“Ah, well,” I said, at a loss for how to respond. I looked at Bo, who had closed his eyes and was shaking his head. “I’m not that young,” I offered.

“You’ve many years ahead of you to consider just how wrong that statement is,” Judge Reed said.

I was not offended by the Judge’s ruling that I was incorrect. She spoke with such authority and grace, I suspected she could tell me the sun was green and I would still believe her.

“You’ll show them upstairs?” Judge Reed addressed her son. “Robert is also bunking up there this weekend.”

“In the servants’ quarters,” said Bo, enunciating.

She waved a hand. “He’s just salty because I kicked him out of his old room.”

“You’ve been picking up some lingo from your clerks, I see,” Bo said.

The assistant was back with a coffee mug, and Judge Reed took a sip, eyes on her son over the rim. “Shouldn’t you all be working? What are you doing here with things the way they are in DC anyway?”

“You told me to come down here,” said Bo. “I thought I should at least try to achieve some work-life balance.”

“When you’re older you can start talking about work-life balance. Now, aren’t you hungry?”

Bo looked warily at his mother. “For lunch or for work?”

“What do you think?” She laughed. I figured I better get laughing too, even if at Bo’s expense. Mine, too, I remembered. “Boy, you’ve gotten soft, and not just around the middle. At least when you were in the army you had some muscle.”

Bo inhaled through his nose. His smile was one of tested patience. “Only reason I enlisted,” he said. “For the six-pack.”

Wallis laughed, but quieted when she saw Judge Reed’s expression, which suggested we should not be laughing about Bo’s decision to enlist rather than major in prelaw.

“All right, now,” said the Judge. “You’ll take the girls out for the afternoon? You’d only be in the way here.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“What are you planning to do?”

“I was going to walk them down to the Battery.”

“If you walk by Market Street, that’s where Aunt Jane is staying. In that hotel I told her to avoid. You might call her and see where she is. See if she’s ready to hear my I told you so yet.”

“Excuse me, is there Wi-Fi in the house?” Wallis interjected.

“Wallis,” I said, embarrassed.

“I’ll give you the code,” Bo said.

“I hope you enjoy your stay,” Judge Reed said, and out she went. In her wake, I feared what she thought of us. Entitled millennial? DC types, singularly worried about Wi-Fi? Me, surely, the idiot who couldn’t remember to introduce herself.