The sun had disappeared hours ago, as had the older guests, cutting the pups free from the restraint that had kept the affair even remotely dignified. This was the part of the night that Gavin liked best, the time when his expert eye could capture those tiny fissures that would one day bring about the end of the marriage. Harbingers of the ruination to come.

His bet: Mrs. Halloway would cheat on her husband. Earlier, he’d taken a picture of the bride dancing with one of the male guests, a man with features ordered from a catalog. The sadness in her eyes in that brief moment exposed a shared past, and Gavin quickly snapped a close-up—the bride’s face raised in apology to her former lover. Gavin imagined Mr. and Mrs. Halloway sitting on a couch, flipping through the wedding album, and coming upon that picture. The thought made him smile.

Another whoop came from the dance floor, and again the bridesmaid pointed her beer at Gavin. “Hey, Picture Boy.”

Gavin held his lens on the two women, but he didn’t click the shutter. Instead, he used the moment to focus on the bridesmaid, a woman with bleached teeth that seemed to glow against her fake tan. And Gavin was pretty sure she’d taped her breasts up, because she filled her dress in a way none of the other bridesmaids had managed.

Gavin knew about such things because he had watched his own mother employ those tricks, back when he was a little boy and she was hunting a new stepfather for him. A memory came to Gavin as he watched the bridesmaid, of a summer evening when he was seven years old. A man had come to visit, and Gavin’s mother, Amy, had given Gavin a talking-to, pointing her bony finger sharply at his face. “Stay in your room! Don’t make a sound. It’s important that you behave tonight.”

Gavin had promised to be quiet, yet when he heard the mix of music and Amy’s laughter coming from the living room below, he couldn’t help sneaking to the steps to spy.

They were dancing, but at the same time, they weren’t. The man moved his hands up and down his mother’s body, squeezing and kneading her as though trying to mold her from Play-Doh, touching her in places that people weren’t supposed to touch. His mother’s chin rested on the man’s shoulder, and she twitched and pinched her eyes shut as he moved his hand under her dress, doing something that brought her up on the tips of her toes.

Gavin was on the verge of charging down the steps to save his mother when she opened her eyes and saw him. He expected her to call to him for help. Together they could push the man out of their house. Instead, Amy twisted her face in anger, her snarled white teeth standing out in Gavin’s memory. She lifted her hand from the man’s back, pointed at Gavin, and then at the top of the stairs, her finger a dagger. She wasn’t in trouble at all. She wanted the man to be doing what he was doing. And for his disobedience, Gavin spent part of the next morning on his knees, his hands taped behind him, his nose pressed against the back of his bedroom closet.