Tommy called Alice just before noon. She was in a bit of a panic because lunchtime was fast approaching and she didn’t want to get stuck eating it with her mom and Richard, just the three of them. She’d holed herself in her room after breakfast so as to avoid her mom, in the garden checking roses for black spots, and Richard, in the office bent over his drafting board. Trapped herself in her room, was more like it. If evasion of Maggie and Richard was the goal, the simplest means of achieving it would have been to go somewhere they weren’t. Only she had no car (Richard, after the fate that befell Camilla, was understandably wary of mixing adolescent girls and motor vehicles), and the club was off limits since Charlie was there and she’d promised to respect Charlie’s need for space. Consequently, when Tommy asked her if she felt like going for a drive, she said yes even before the question was all the way out of his mouth. He laughed and told her he’d be right over.

Alice stood with her ear pressed to her door. When the loudest sound she could hear was her own heartbeat, she opened it, started down the wide, turning staircase that led to the first floor. She used to be afraid of the men and women in the portraits lining the walls of the front hall and entranceway. Floods, every last one of them, their dark eyes—watching eyes—following her from inside the heavy gilt frames, tracking her movements, storing up information on her comings and goings to report back to Richard. His informers. His spies. She was one of them now, though. Blood. They wouldn’t dare tattle.

Keeping what Jane Austen would call her countenance, what Charlie would call her shit together, Alice walked out the front door, calmly returning any gaze she happened to meet on the way, maintaining an even, unhurried pace. At last she was in the sunshine. She knew Tommy wouldn’t want to run into anyone from her family. Nor would she for that matter. So she decided to intercept him at the top of the driveway.