She’d guessed right about this party from start to finish: the toasts for Jane and Desmond, the applause, the delicate finger food, the delicate waiters. It was all very merry and fitting, but she’d lost her taste for cheerful celebrations like this—unless they were organized to celebrate her accomplishments. And unless she figured out a follow-up to Dead Husband, that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon. There were too many couples drifting around the apartment for any real fun: the married academics, bored senseless with each other but inseparable; the hosts, cooing and clingy, but obviously trawling the party for an amuse-bouche or two to spend the night with them; all those inscrutable pairs of well-scrubbed men who might be anything from lovers to fraternal twins. Desmond and his garrulous little lover had barely parted company once all evening, a dead giveaway that neither one trusted the other. And then there was Jane and Thomas, down from Boston and both flushed with Jane’s newfound semisuccess. The two of them seemed to have discovered a fresh level of compatibility in recent years, something Rosemary had envied, right up to an hour ago when Jane had introduced her to a dark, handsome co-producer. “Andrew,” she’d said, and then let her hand linger on his arm in a proprietary way, as if she wanted Rosemary to know—or assume—there was more to their relationship than business. Lock up your sons and lovers, ladies, a happily married wife and mother was on the loose.

Couples were so smug, so self-satisfied, even when unfaithful and miserable. The worst of it was when people approached her in tandem, trying to make polite conversation, silently saying: Too bad the ark is a couples-only resort and you singles are going to be left here to drown.

She found the bedroom where the coats had been stashed and pulled her sweater from the middle of the pile on the bed. As she was putting it on, she heard a giggle come from the bathroom. She peered in and saw Jane’s son and the equally unappealing friend he’d dragged down from Boston—a girl named Schenectady or Newburgh or something—going through the medicine cabinet. Gerald would be eight now and was even larger than the last time she’d seen him, and he was wearing a red corduroy jumpsuit with a zipper up the front. Poor Jane.

“What are you children doing in there?” she asked.

Both turned, the girl frightened and embarrassed. Gerald was holding a box of condoms. In that terrifying adult voice of his, he said, “Plattsburgh has a headache and I was trying to find her an aspirin.”