Of course it was true, whether Helen recognized it or not. Over the past couple of weeks, she hadn’t felt as overwhelmed by Thomas and the yard and by dragging Gerald to school and shrink and piano lessons and the whole confusing assortment of real and fabricated appointments.

“I should have been discussing this dinner party. Talk about needing to have your head examined.” Although she’d planned the whole thing to meet Desmond Sullivan and get him on her side with this documentary project, she’d ended up inviting Rosemary Boyle as well. Rosemary was in the last seconds of her fifteen minutes of fame, and Jane figured Desmond might be impressed that they were friends. Plus she hadn’t had time to pull together her proposal as fully as she’d hoped, and Rosemary would be a distraction from specifics. The real insanity had been in inviting her brother and his wife. But if Desmond turned out to be a dud conversation-wise, Rosemary would be entertained just to be in the presence of Brian, with whom, Jane was almost positive, Rosemary had had a furtive encounter of some sort on the beach years ago when Rosemary and Charlie visited on Nantucket and Brian was single and still a student at the Harvard School of Design. And then there was the fact that Brian was supplying some kind of architectural expertise to this restaurant Dale had invested in, so you couldn’t tell what interesting observations he might inadvertently make about her ex-husband.

When she pulled into the driveway, she saw the caterers’ rattletrap blue van parked near the back door. Maybe she’d call the school next week and suggest they at least repaint the van since everyone she knew seemed to be increasingly concerned with “food safety”—the latest variety of eating disorder to seize the public imagination—and this thing didn’t inspire confidence. She let Helen out of the back seat and called for Gerald. A ghostly, blurred version of Sarah appeared behind the screen door. From this angle, distorted by the loose, dusty screens, Sarah bore an unsettling resemblance to Thomas, or Thomas as he might have looked if you stuck him in a flowered housedress and an unconvincing white wig. As soon as Sarah spotted Jane, she withdrew from the door into the darker recesses of the house.