“Hey, he offered to buy you one, too. It’s not my fault you wouldn’t get off your high horse and say yes. And why do you want to borrow mine? Who’re you going to call? Not Patrick. He’s been calling you and calling you. I haven’t seen you pick up once.”

“Just shut up and give it to me. I’d use mine but yours has Internet on it.” After thirty seconds or so of tapping the screen, Alice held up the phone triumphantly. “There,” she said, pointing to the screen. “Look. I knew it.”

“And what am I looking at?” Charlie said, in a bored voice.

“The Wikipedia page of the Art Institute of Chicago.”

“And what is it on this Wikipedia page that you find so fascinating?”

“That Modern Wing at the Art Institute of Chicago that mom was talking about? It really is modern.”

Charlie, interested in spite of herself, said, “How modern?”

“Not even two years old.”

Charlie was quiet for a second, then said, “That doesn’t mean anything. Dad gigs all over the place. I’m sure he’s been to Chicago in the last two years. In fact, I’m sure he’s been more than once.”

“So what if he has? Since when does mom go with dad on gigs? Hardly ever. And definitely not to Chicago. And definitely not in the last two years.”

Charlie’s voice rose, “So what are you saying? That mom and Richard got together before they said they did?”

“It makes sense, doesn’t it? They seem to know each other really well, like way too well for the amount of time they’ve supposedly spent together.”

Alice watched her sister absorb the implications of what she was saying, then watched her sister try to shake those implications off. “Whatever. You’re too obsessed with detail.”

“And you’re too oblivious to detail,” Alice shot back.

Charlie let out a long-suffering sigh. “You maybe, possibly, but not definitely caught mom in an itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny fib. Big. Deal.”

“So it doesn’t bother you that mom deceived dad, was with another guy while she was still with him? That she’s a cheater?”

“May have deceived dad. May be a cheater.” At that moment, Charlie’s phone buzzed: a text message alert. Looking down at the screen, she said, excited but trying to play it cool, “Cybill and Jude are at the front door.”

“God, it didn’t take you three long to become attached at the hip. What are they doing here?”

“I invited them. I figured we could go out back to the deck. Mom and Richard won’t care. The house is so big they’ll barely know we’re here. Why don’t you come?” After a beat, she said, “Labor Day, Allie.”