She had me there. Never keeping up with the family email chain, only checking it periodically, like a credit card bill, was probably the worst of my vices, along with buying too many pairs of expensive socks and camera straps. I considered my options. Not that there were many of them. I had no time for another errand. Borrowing clothes wouldn’t work; I was taller than my mother and broader than Maggie. But what could I do? The Veuve was ordered. The linens laid out. “It’s okay,” I told my sister. “I’ll wear a trash bag and walk around with my mouth open and people can just toss their shrimp tails and toothpicks at me.”

Maggie rolled her eyes. “God, Cassie, you’re too much.”

Jules shifted, so I was able to grab my sister’s hand, playfully swing it back and forth. “Oh, don’t be mad at me, Buggie. Look! I even got you a little present.” I placed on her lap an unwrapped box.

Maggie looked between me and the gift, until I persuaded her to just open it already. Earlier, I’d braved the gridlock on Lower Thames to pop into the little shop that had been there forever—you know, the one where you could buy whatever you wanted, provided it was a silver picture frame, a lobster Christmas ornament, or sign that said It’s Wine O’clock Somewhere—and gotten framed a photo I’d fished out from an old album in my New York apartment.

My sister smiled when she saw the photo. A grinning Gerber-baby-faced Maggie, probably aged two and a half, holding a one-year-old me, cheeks covered in something, jam or raspberries, in one of those old-fashioned playpens with the wooden bars. Maggie was cheesing but I was wailing, tiny, dimpled hands clinging to the top rim, midstruggle to escape what I surely considered infant jail. Our mother crouched in the foreground, clutching the ends of her short bob, eyes crossed, exaggerating a look of my God, these kids!

“I love this,” Maggie said, softening. “It captures us so perfectly.”

I was glad to have done this right, at least.

Jules returned with a brush that seemed like it could dust a ceiling fan, and a palette of pink shimmer. Maggie handed me the frame. “Put it over there for now.” She pointed to the Chippendale secretary desk with the ornate brass drawer pulls and tasseled keys.

The polished top of the desk was already filled with photographs of Susie and various people of renown. Her and Iris Apfel, Jay Leno, the late, great André Leon Talley, and—oh, I would need the story behind this one—Kris Jenner. Susie, to her credit, did not do anyone the disservice of hiding her social ambitions. I found room for us Coventry-Gilfords near the edge. “Maybe you should leave this for Susie. I’m sure she’d enjoy having a picture of Hope in her bedroom,” I said dryly.