Then one weekend, newly married, Holly had taken Ted to Palm Springs. She hadn’t thought of doing anything complicated, nothing that would involve the staff, just a quick getaway that she could book herself. Simple. She was going to pack a picnic for the drive there, but when Barbara offered to pick up a hamper from Gelson’s, that sounded much better. She’d planned on doing the driving herself, except Barbara had assumed they’d want a limo and had already reserved it. And when, at the last minute, Ted said they might as well take the helicopter, she figured why not. She squeezed Ted’s hand, up above the Friday evening traffic, to let him know that she loved him for putting work aside for the weekend, and he smiled at her, his sweet, young bride with her headphones. At some point in the days leading up to it, Barbara had asked whether she wanted the usual room setup, and Holly had said yes, thinking it had something to do with the size of the bed, not understanding that the usual was to send an advance person to make all the modifications to a room that they’d come to expect. It was only when they got to their suite two hours early—A head start on the weekend! What luck!—that Holly’s heart sank. A woman who’d been working for them for a year or so and whom Holly had had no idea was pregnant, let alone this pregnant, clambered up from her hands and knees. She’d plugged in the bedside lamp, having evidently just moved, by herself, all the furniture in the suite so that the bed faced west, not east, and so that the desk faced east, not west.

Ted had spoken first. “My God, Rachel. I’m so sorry to keep you out late like this. You must let the pilot take you back.”

Holly could only gape in mortification.

“It’s no trouble, honestly,” Rachel had said, straightening her tunic over her stomach, but her sweaty upper lip and the hands at her back had said otherwise.

Ted had emailed Barbara and his chief of staff to find out how on earth Rachel had been tasked with this assignment, and it turned out that there was a reasonable explanation, but it ruined the evening. After that, Holly didn’t want to know who made things happen in her life, and though she tried to be modest in her requests, eventually she learned not to worry about that either. Rachel quit soon after the Palm Springs trip. Holly didn’t have to ask why.

“Look up,” Kelly said, and Holly stared up at Kelly’s chin. They were doing a smoky eye for the party tonight, the “new” smoky eye, which was somehow different from the old one.