They weren’t the idle rich or the working rich or any kind of rich at all. They were students and student wives. They were used to cramped quarters and scrounging for rent and never having quite enough of anything. And here they were, gathered on the second floor of a mansion to end all mansions—and it was theirs for the duration, or however long it was going to be, brothers and sisters alike. And for now she really didn’t want to think beyond that. She put the glass to her lips, inhaled the fragrance of gin, and took a small slow sip of her drink as if she had all the time in the world.

Even after they’d been led up and down the hallways and peered into every one of the sixty-four rooms and admired the views from both towers, Tim still wouldn’t let anyone even think about unpacking. No, it was dinnertime, and Dick had spent the better part of the afternoon in the enormous kitchen, preparing one of his nonpareil marinara sauces, with meatballs and real Italian sausage from the deli in Poughkeepsie and enough vermicelli to feed the entire county. They had wine to drink, stories to tell, the moment to celebrate, and all these trivial details—choosing a room, lugging in suitcases, fretting over school registration and the next trip to the store for deodorant, toothpaste and shampoo—were nothing to worry over now. “Things’ll sort themselves out,” he said, as high on the moment as she’d ever seen him—and maybe high on something else too. “They always do, don’t they?”

Dinner was served in the formal dining room and they all pitched in to set the table for twenty, which seemed to her the perfect number—twelve adults, eight children, the adults at one end of the table, the children at the other, but for Dick, who insisted on sitting with the children. Tim had music playing—the first thing he’d done on moving in was to set up the stereo, wired to play in several rooms at once, because, as he said, there could be no life without music. She recognized the first album—Miles Davis’s Someday My Prince Will Come, their copy of which Fitz had played so many times it sounded as if an aerial bombardment were going on over the quieter parts—but then he put something on she didn’t recognize, a flute rising up over a deep well of bass and piano till it felt as if a bird on very light wings was soaring round the room. Which was nice. Very nice. She was feeling pleasantly inebriated, what with the cocktails and the Chianti Dick had served with dinner, and she settled in, Fitz on one side, Tim on the other, and just let herself drift.