“She’s a doctor,” Tyler said. “And that’s my sister Madeline,” he said, pointing to the baby in Mary’s arms.

“… and we need a nanny.”

“Oh … no,” Josie had said. “I’m a graduate student.” But Mary persisted, said that their last nanny had been a graduate student and couldn’t she at least take Josie out for coffee to discuss it? She grabbed Josie’s hand and pleaded, and Josie felt all Mary’s confidence pressing into her palm like a warm penny.

So they walked down to the coffee shop on the corner, Tyler scuffing his shoes against the curb, Josie awkwardly holding the baby’s diaper bag, and Mary charming Josie with stories about her stint as an encyclopedia salesgirl in college.

She was just like Josie’s mother, who could hold an entire room’s attention just by clearing her throat, could get even the tightest-lipped strangers to share their secrets. People adored her, adjusted their schedule around her elaborate themed parties—A White Christmas in December (complete with manufactured snow and sleigh rides), the Black and White Ball in April, and Josie’s favorite, because of the snow-cone machine and petting zoo, the Morgan Backyard Carnival in August. At the fancier events, Josie was allowed to come for appetizers and then put to bed. Often her cousin Natalie would also stay the night, and the two of them would sneak out to the stair landing and sit with their nightgowns pulled over their knees and watch the festivities. “Let’s count the drunk people,” Natalie would say, but Josie would shake her head. “Let’s send down a paper airplane with a message,” Natalie would try, but Josie would ignore her and, if that didn’t work, elbow her quickly in the ribs and send her sulking back to bed. Josie wanted to watch her mother, watch her enchant her many admirers with just the turn of her head, a hand on a lapel. Josie’s father was always close by, ready to refill her wineglass or light her cigarette—the perpetual suitor. It was spectacular, her mother’s magnetism—all that power so effortlessly exposed. “Your mother should have been born a French princess,” her mother’s sister, Aunt Steffi, would say, and Josie would nod solemnly, a bit terrified at the vision of her mother in her tennis whites shouting “Off with their heads!”