“Not that I’ve heard.” Jane wouldn’t have minded especially if one of the guests had canceled. They were doing a conversation on the recent turn of events in another of those kindergarten sex scandals that should have dropped out of the news decades ago. If Jane had booked the guests herself, she would have loaded the table with experts who’d debunk and discredit the recovered memory industry, but Chloe had done most of the booking for this particular discussion, so the guests would be a group of therapists who made their livelihoods convincing people they were miserable, and state prosecutors who’d made careers out of putting innocent people behind bars. This was the fourth show Chloe had booked, and even if Jane didn’t agree with her point of view, she had to admit—grudgingly—that Chloe did a masterful job of making sure the guests all arrived on time, were prepared to speak, and knew the importance of staying on subject. It was the thrill of the new for her. At her age, everything had the thrill of the new, and it was infectious. She swept back her curls and tapped her long fingers on the door jamb. “I was just upstairs. David asked me to see if you were free. To have a talk with him.”

She was nervous and it showed, and it was so uncharacteristic of her to display any professional discomfort or doubt, Jane started to worry. “What does he want now?” she asked.

Chloe pulled her head back so her chin was tucked into her neck, a gesture she apparently intended to come across as astonishment. “I wouldn’t know!” she said. It was the first time Jane had seen Chloe look unattractive in all the months she’d been at the station. Jane had been hoping to see her look frazzled or homely or frantic since the day she arrived, but now she felt let down, the way you might feel let down by seeing weakness in an overbearing parent you longed to see diminished but needed to be strong. (The way Jane had felt betrayed by her own parents when they had up and died, father following mother into the grave at an early age, as if neither had taken into consideration the consequences for her and for Brian. Not to mention the consequences for Joyce and Thomas.) And besides that, Chloe’s gesture was thoroughly unconvincing. A bad actress doing Lady Macbeth.

Jane pushed herself back from her desk and stood up, and Chloe came to life, as if seeing Jane trying to rouse herself from her stupor was cheering. She smiled brightly and announced that their tickets for Florida had arrived this morning. “Everything’s set,” she said. “Tim got the time off from work, and I got an incredible deal on the van. And you’re going to love the price of the hotel.”

“You’re exceptional in every way,” Jane said. “I mean that.”