Though if I had to roofie someone . . . Spence took advantage of my husband, skated close around ethical corners, and I didn’t love how he treated women. There was a basic disrespect there, in the way he talked over us at dinner parties or let his eyes drop lower than our faces. He’d cheated on both his wives. If whatever she took from him during his lost time cost him money or embarrassment, even his career, I would not regret it. Not if I got Robert back.

She said, “He’s a big man. Tall and broad, carrying some extra weight. One won’t do it. Two might, but I can’t play with ‘might.’ Three is sure, so make it three. My daughter will be watching, waiting for the drugs to hit.”

Her daughter would be at the party? I asked a question without thinking. “If she’s there, can’t she just give him—”

She interrupted, her voice harsh. “You think we didn’t try? We went to his office before. We couldn’t even get past that receptionist. But you? He’ll talk to you. He’ll be sweet and drink whatever you give him. Because you matter.”

“I only matter because I married Trey,” I said, but she was still talking.

“That receptionist wouldn’t so much as give us an appointment. I insisted, said I needed a lawyer, and she tried to pawn me off on some little bitty black girl who passed by. That child didn’t look half old enough to be a lawyer. He didn’t have time for the likes of us. We don’t blend with your kind of people.”

“My kind of people?” She was saying I was soft again. A noise came out of me. Not a laugh, but related. “Everyone at this party belongs to Trey. I don’t blend either.” I faltered at the end, because in midsentence I knew that what I was saying wasn’t true. I might not be fully at home with Trey’s old-money Buckhead crowd, but I wasn’t like her. Not anymore. “I know how to look the part. I’ve been married sixteen years. But I grew up in Hurd County, just me and my mom.” She hadn’t mentioned a husband, and I’d never met my father. Our families sounded similar. If she knew how much she had in common with my own mother, she might feel softer toward me. “I didn’t have a college fund or private school. We lived in a two-bedroom ranch house that leaked every time it rained.” I could also hear myself easing a little more South into my vowels. Nothing obvious. Not fake so much as regressive. One step closer to seventeen-year-old Sabreena Kroger’s diction. “Every fall my mom would drive me two towns over to go to the Goodwill there, so my ‘new’ school clothes wouldn’t be recognized by whoever threw them out.”