“I go back and forth,” Cricket said. “For the time being, I choose to believe Mac’s side of the story. That he didn’t start up with this woman until after he and Louise separated. That’s the way I can stomach it.”

“I meant how are you dealing with being on the outs? Like with the people, right over there, giving us the stink eye?” Right on cue, those people—people Cricket once knew, former bridge partners and bunco socialites—having finished sizing us up and down, gave us the pleasure of viewing their glamorous backs.

“Oh, them,” she said, fluttering a hand. “They’ll get over it once the band provides them with other entertainment.”

“As my mum would say, They’re just jealous,” Atlas said. “You look spectacular, Cricket.”

He was correct; my mother had chosen a halter-neck beaded gown that brought out the green in her eyes. Following in Wallis’s footsteps, as she often did, she’d changed her hair, made it a shade lighter, as though she’d been basking in the sunshine rather than in meetings with lawyers and bankers and boxes of tissues. Her nails were red and she’d bronzed her neckline. It was quite the reentrance.

“Have you seen Wallis and Blake?” Cricket asked.

“Have we ever,” I said.

“That’s a tone.”

“He’s...beautiful, as Wallis said. He resembles his mother. It makes me queasy.”

“Careful there.” Cricket spotted Wallis and Blake at a high-top table near the bar, and they waved us over. Like a tree grows away from a power line, so the crowd arched away from us as we crossed the room. “You haven’t been too fond of people comparing you to your father. Give him a chance.”

I let her and Atlas go to the new couple and proceeded to wait uncommonly long for two glasses of champagne.

“How are you so important that you’re at table seven and we’re exiled to table twenty-one?” Wallis was asking Blake when I joined the group. Outside, the sun was setting, painting the sky behind the White House shades of orange and purple. “What sorority did I have to pledge to get in with the bride?”

“Kappa kappa blonde,” he said. “Will you miss me?”

Wallis pouted and he kissed her above her ear. “If they have more than two courses, I am going to be very angry. Can I switch the place cards?”

“No, Wallis.” I was sharp.

Her head snapped my way. “Why not? I’d be stealthy.”

“Do you want to get us kicked out of here?” I raised my eyebrows.

“God, Daisy,” she said. “What is this, a club? Where’s the bouncer?”

“She’s in a big white dress, about five feet nine inches tall, one hundred and twenty pounds, currently standing by the shrimp tower and scowling at us. Can’t miss her.”