She cut the steak she ordered into bites, but didn’t eat them. She was too preoccupied to be hungry. Not only was she trying to avoid stumbling into accidental eye contact with Stan, she was also waiting for the perfect moment to bring up the party in New York City that Jude and Cybill were driving down to in under an hour, a party that she, well, not desperately—okay, pretty desperately—wanted to go to. (It wasn’t the idea of going to the party itself that had her so hot and bothered; it was the idea that if she didn’t go, Jude and Cybill would be alone together.) When the non-Stan waiter brought out the coffee and dishes of coconut sorbet that Richard and Alice had ordered for dessert, Charlie gathered together her nerve and broached the subject. “So, mom,” she said, bisecting a stray bread crumb on the tablecloth with the edge of her thumbnail, “there’s this party tonight . . .”

Maggie smiled indulgently. (Maggie was in a seriously good mood this evening, Charlie noticed, very pleased with herself. She seemed to think she was as responsible for winning the commission as Richard, which, Charlie supposed, maybe she was.) “That’s fine,” Maggie said. “It’s a weeknight, but it’s summer vacation. You can go. Have fun. Just no drinking and driving. And be home by twelve.”

“I was thinking maybe you’d let me stay out a little bit later tonight.”

“How much later?”

“Well, actually, twelve’s fine. Just twelve noon, not twelve midnight.”

“What?”

Talking fast, Charlie said, “The party’s in New York, you know, Manhattan. Jude and Cybill are leaving for it in a little bit, and I said I’d ask if I could go.”

Maggie set down her coffee cup so hard it clattered in the saucer. “No.”

“Mom, why?”

“You’re asking, I’m answering. You absolutely cannot go.”

“Oh, Margaret,” said Richard, “let her. It’s still early and it’s only a two-hour drive to the city. She’ll be back by tomorrow.”

Maggie shot Richard a rare—rare to the point of never—butt-out look, then whipped back around to face her youngest daughter. “You think I’m going to let you drive down to New York City and spend the night with that wild Devlin boy who has no parents?”

“Jude has parents.”

“Well, you wouldn’t know it because they’re never around. He’s raising himself, from what I can see. Wealthy but deprived. The father’s so busy lieutenant-governing Massachusetts or whatever it is he does, he lets his teenage kid run completely wild.”