It shocked Alice, upset her, too, to realize that Charlie’s feelings for Jude had grown serious, that the relationship was no longer just a bit of flirtatious fun. Like Charlie was into him only because he was different from the guys she’d known in the past, because he represented a challenge. As Charlie looked at Jude, her eyes, Alice could see, were full of emotion. How did this happen so fast? Alice wondered. More to the point, how did she not see it coming, do more to prevent it? Alice wished she could warn Charlie off Jude if it wasn’t already too late, tell her about his on-the-sly relationship with Camilla, how soon it was after the two became involved that Camilla drove off Greeves Bridge. But it wasn’t her secret to reveal. It was Tommy’s, and she didn’t have his permission. She had the opposite, in fact. He’d explicitly told her that he didn’t want people knowing Camilla was with Jude while Camilla was still with him. And if she couldn’t tell Charlie what she’d learned from Tommy, she knew she might as well not open her mouth at all. Her influence with her sister was already seriously on the wane. Charlie thought she was all gloom and doom, seeing menace everywhere because of her suspicions about her mom and Richard. Suspicions, incidentally, that had proved fully justified. Didn’t matter, though. Alice understood that if she went on a tear about Jude too, without proof, Charlie would dismiss her completely. Charlie was just looking for an excuse to write her off as a no-fun, killjoy, conspiracy-theory nutcase, so she couldn’t give her one. No, Alice would just have to bite her tongue until she could go to Charlie with something solid, something that couldn’t be brushed off.

Out of the corner of her eye, Alice saw a flash of movement: Jude, on the go. He was leading Lucy by the elbow out of the main party, to the back porch. He was saying something to her that was making her laugh, his lips at the rim of her ear. As the door closed behind them, Charlie stood up abruptly from the couch, leaving Cybill staring at her, confused, in mid-sentence. For a tense moment, Alice thought she was going to go after Jude and Lucy, make a scene. Breathed a sigh of relief when she didn’t. Instead she spun around, walked across the room to that valet-waiter guy—stan, his name tag said—struck up a conversation.