I smile and shrug my bare shoulders. There’s no way to explain to her that what’s changed about me this week is everything.

It seems that all 2,300 members of the STS conference are milling around on the lawn of the Palace Tower like a swarm of formally dressed ants. There’s a large stage set up at the far edge, where a live band is performing the song “Beyond the Sea.” The lawn is a huge square, the stage serving as one side, with three long buffet tables making up the other sides, the dining tables and chairs all boxed inside.

I pick at the food. If I never see another buffet table in my life, I’ll be fine with that.

“Eat your dinner,” Abby scolds me. “You’re a growing girl.”

I take three more bites.

Mom demolishes her dinner with that speedy-eating efficiency she says she picked up in med school. Then she abandons us to go backstage with the other presenters and prepare. I push my plate away and survey the scene for signs of Nick.

“You look very nice tonight, dearie,” Marjorie says from across the table.

“Thank you. You’re beautiful, too.” She’s wearing a long-sleeved, floor-length lavender gown with chiffon butterflies at the neckline. “Not everybody could pull off that dress, but you do.”

“Don’t I know it,” she replies. “If you’ve got it, flaunt it, I always say.”

“If you’ve got what?” Abby asks, tilting her head to one side.

“Pizzazz.” Marjorie finishes her glass of red wine and gazes around us almost sadly. “You should be somewhere more lively, my dear, dressed like that. Not stuck with all of us old farts.”

Abby giggles. “Farts.” That’s a new word. Pop will be thrilled.

Marjorie’s sharp brown eyes widen slightly. She’s looking at something over my shoulder. “Here comes trouble in a red dress.”

I turn. Marjorie gives a low whistle as Afton materializes from amid the crowd. She’s wearing a dress I’ve never seen before, scarlet to match her lipstick, the front cut almost down to her belly button.

Holy shit.

For the first time since we arrived, I am sincerely glad Pop isn’t with us. He would have a stroke if he saw Afton in that dress, at one of Mom’s work functions, no less.

“Look at you, girl,” crows Marjorie as Afton approaches. “Aha! That Wong boy is going to rue the day he let you slip away from him when he sees you gussied up like that.”

“I think that’s the point,” I mutter.

“What’s gussied up?” Abby asks.

Afton shoots me a cool glare and sits down in the seat next to me, which we saved for her. When she crosses her legs, she reveals another titillating feature of the dress: a slit that runs up the side to the middle of her thigh.