As I make my way through the living room, my eye snags on a pop of color in the sea of normal neutrals. Now I’m definitely stalling, but I make my way over to inspect. A wide-mouthed mason jar is perched on the edge of mom’s glass coffee table, and it is stuffed with bloodred flowers intermingled with sprigs of something green. I lean in to take a look, instantly recognizing the flowers’ cup-shaped blossoms. Poppies. I know because my mom brought in ten different types for a California poppy–themed wedding last summer. But these poppies look nothing like the pristine flowers my mom typically flies in. These ones are wilted and a bit messy, with stems of all different lengths and a few missing petals. And the green is an herb—rosemary? I lean in for a smell and get a quick whiff halfway between pine and mint. Definitely rosemary. I recognize it from my dad’s cooking. Who made this?

And then I realize something else that makes me look up uneasily: the silence. An hour ago, when I made my sad exodus to the pool, the house was full of my mom and Drew’s staff, busy preparing for their upcoming event. Napkins, color swatches, and half a dozen sample bouquets were laid out on the dining room table, which is now… empty. Where is everyone?

“Mom?” I call into the emptiness.

I make my way into the foyer. The house is pin-neat and quiet as a tomb. Even the pile of designer shoes by the door is gone. The only sounds are the muffled noises coming from Noah’s crew.

And then I hear another noise, like the tiny scrabblings of a hamster or squirrel. Is that… sniffling? Is someone here crying?

“Mom?” I call out into the quiet. My voice wavers a bit.

“In here.” Her reply is immediate, her voice coming from her private office area, but the sound is off somehow. Muffled. My heart breaks into a jog along with my feet.

My mom’s office might be the nicest room in the entire nice house, and according to the magazine photographer, it’s definitely the most photogenic. She has a large marble-topped desk, a perfectly aged leather chair, and the exact right amount of knickknacks arranged just so. On the wall across from her desk are her mood boards—six framed spaces that contain ideas for her upcoming projects with fabrics, color swatches, scribbled words, etc. And standing soldier-straight on the custom shelving she had made specifically for them are her binders. The spines are written on in her careful handwriting, and they’re placed in chronological order of the date of each event, their insides obsessively documented accounts of every detail that went into each event. If you want to know how many spoons were present at the Berlusconi/Bridget wedding, all you have to do is open the binder.