What if Kelly and Bernard and Rio had seen the ad on InsideScoop? Holly didn’t know what was worse—that they’d seen it and might bring it up, or that they’d seen it and were surgically gossiping around the topic. She trusted the people in this room implicitly—you had to give yourself over to someone who watched you stuff yourself into a pair of Spanx, who covered up the acne on your chin, who knew what color your hair really was—but what if someone else, someone slightly more peripheral to the effort, went to the press and confirmed the ad? It’s true, the Stablers are that crazy. Wait ’til you hear how many assistants they have!

There were always sharks circling, hoping to get a bite, like that reporter at the marina. Holly knew they should have kept their distance from the Henrys until Vic’s image was rehabilitated, but the problem was the boys were such good friends. Flynn had stayed close to Cosmo during the Bag Man scandal, defending his friend from the jerks at school who gave him a hard time.

“It’s not his fault if his dad does something wrong,” Flynn said one day on the way home from school. “And I don’t see what was so terrible about what Mr. Henry did anyway. He’s not a perv or anything. He didn’t touch that actress.”

By then, there was no telling how many times Flynn had watched the video, though he’d never watched it around her. It was the thing she hated most about her children growing up, even more than the hugs drying up and the rolls of baby fat disappearing. She knew it was just part of life, but that didn’t make it any less unnerving when your children accessed some fact from their mental Rolodex, some lyric or tidbit or belief that you hadn’t put there. And now, rattling around Flynn’s mind like an escaped pinball, there was that video of that asshole grinding on the prima donna.

“Well, no,” Holly said, “but a good director takes responsibility for what happens on his set. Can you picture Dad letting something like that happen on one of his?”

“No,” Flynn had said, hanging his head and biting his nail.

Holly had looked at Ilya to see if he’d been listening. She’d wondered whether he agreed with her or Flynn or maybe both of them.

A year later, Flynn seemed determined to reestablish Cosmo among his friends. He’d convinced him to go out for soccer this spring, and to invite two other boys on this fishing trip. Holly had been moved by her son’s loyalty, and so she’d said yes, he could spend these two weeks with the Henrys. Soon enough Vic’s reputation would be fully restored, and in some ways, he’d have Flynn to thank for it.