J. Ellis had noticed that his daughter was wearing a smart short-sleeved yellow and white suit, and he suspected she’d deliberately coordinated her outfit to the cake she’d brought.

“MOTHER!” Betty had shouted again.

J. Ellis had taken several long strides over to the liquor cabinet and reached for the Myers’s rum.

“Elizabeth, dear, do stop shouting,” the voice had floated down the stairwell.

J. Ellis hadn’t needed to look over his shoulder to see the fallen expression, the barely perceptible slump in her shoulders. He’d seen it often enough. The visible dampening of Betty’s high spirits that always accompanied each and every correction from her mother. “Stop shouting,” “Speak distinctly,” “Stand up straight,” “Stop flaunting your bosom.” Florence had missed her calling as an elegant, contradictory drill sergeant.

Florence Reed had descended the stairs in much the same way she’d walked down the aisle on their wedding day. Slowly, gracefully, and with a gleaming, forced smile. It was also the way she had modeled enormous ribbon-and-feather-festooned hats in Ladies’ Fashions at the department store in Syracuse, where J. Ellis had first seen her. He and his fraternity brothers used to drive up to Syracuse from Colgate, just over an hour’s drive in the motorcar, to watch the football game and “sample the local culture.” The local culture was sometimes found in Ladies’ Fashions at Dey Brothers.

J. Ellis had settled on Colgate after being rejected by Cornell, which he’d planned to settle on after his rejections from the Big Three (Harvard, Yale, and Princeton), and he still almost couldn’t utter their names without spitting in bitter disgust. After Cornell’s rejection, he’d chosen the next-best option, in his opinion, and closest both alphabetically and geographically. And then he’d just hoped it wouldn’t make too much of a difference to Wall Street. Florence hadn’t minded that he wasn’t a Harvard man. She’d been a fine arts major. The fine art of husband-hunting, the fellows would snort as they tooted on their flasks of Old Highland, smoked their cigars, and waved their triangle flags.

He’d sighed. Colgate, Syracuse, and Florence. The triumvirate of his misery. Those Wall Street bastards had rejected him, presumably due to his not-quite-up-to-snuff background. He had to admit he’d dodged a bullet with the ’29 crash, there, but things had eventually shaped up afterward, hadn’t they, yes they had. Ohio banking had made quite an impact, hadn’t it, yes it had. Those fat cats could take their Big Three graduates and their money and shove it right up their asses.

“Did your father tell you what he’s going to do with our money?”

J. Ellis had stared intently as the rum poured into the glass tumbler, but he had felt Betty’s eyes on him.

“What do you mean?”

J. Ellis had taken a large swallow from the tumbler as his wife reached the bottom step of the staircase. She’d kept one hand on the newel post as she leaned toward Betty’s cheek for a kiss.

“How are you, dear.”