Margot had said, You don’t have to follow Mom’s advice to the letter, Jenna. If she were alive now, even she might second-guess the pearls.

But Jenna wouldn’t budge.

To Rhonda, Margot said, “I’m glad you like the dress.”

Autumn said, “But just so you know, bridesmaids are supposed to complain about the dress. It’s in the Bridesmaid Handbook.”

“Handbook?” Rhonda said.

“She’s kidding,” Margot said.

Their entrées came, Margot’s steak, Autumn’s chicken, Rhonda’s sole. Rhonda had obviously given up being a Megan-vegan, but Margot decided not to mention it. Why rock the boat? She sipped her wine and then drank some water. Her steak was seared on the outside and pink and juicy on the inside, and it came with some kind of creamy potato thing and lemony sautéed spinach, and as Margot ate, her mood improved. She realized she was sort of glad that Jenna and Finn had left because the pressure of making sure the evening was perfect and that Jenna was having fun had been lifted.

Rhonda said, “So… I have a new boyfriend.”

“Really?” Margot knew next to nothing about Rhonda’s personal life, but from certain things Pauline had said, Margot had gleaned that Rhonda’s career was abysmal and her dating situation even worse.

“Wanna see a picture?” Rhonda whipped out her phone and scrolled to a photo of a behemoth man wearing a tight black T-shirt that showed off his oiled, rock-hard muscles. He reminded Margot of Arnold Schwarzenegger from his bodybuilding days. He had a full head of hair and a nice smile.

“Wow,” Margot said.

“His name is Raymond,” Rhonda said. “He’s a trainer at my gym.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “He has an eleven-inch penis.”

“Really?” Autumn said, perking up. “Eleven inches? You’re sure you’re not exaggerating? Eleven inches is BIG.”

“Eleven inches,” Rhonda confirmed.

Margot nodded appreciatively, guessing that Raymond and his prodigious member might be responsible for the transformation of Rhonda’s personality.

“What about you, Margot? Are you dating anyone?” Rhonda asked. “You must have men all over you. You’re so pretty and smart.”

Smart? Margot knew Rhonda meant book smart, but when it came to men, Margot was as big an idiot as anyone else. A bigger idiot, in fact.

Before she could stop herself, Margot said, “Actually, I’m dating my father’s law partner.”

She sat for a second, stunned that she had spoken those words out loud. She was scandalized with herself. She looked at her glass of red wine and thought, Damn you. Nobody, and she meant nobody, knew about her and Edge-except for her and Edge. But she found it felt cathartic to say it aloud. To finally tell someone.

“He’s fifty-nine years old,” she said.

“Whoa,” Autumn said.

“You can’t say a word,” Margot said. “It’s a secret.” She looked at Autumn first. Autumn might whip out her phone any second and text Jenna. Then Margot looked at Rhonda, who was a bigger security threat. Rhonda, Margot knew, told her mother everything, and if Rhonda told Pauline about this, Pauline would most certainly tell Doug. What had Margot done? She had blown it. She might as well have changed her status on Facebook to read, Dating my father’s law partner, so that all 486 of her “friends” knew the truth. She had just sabotaged her relationship. If Edge knew that Margot had spilled the beans, he would end it.

Margot said, “I’m dead serious. You can’t tell a soul. I’ll know if you’ve told anyone, and I will find you, and I will kill you.” She was using what Drum Jr. called her “scary mom voice.” This was the only weapon she had in her arsenal, and she wasn’t certain it would be effective. She didn’t trust either of these people.

“I won’t tell,” Autumn said.

“I won’t tell,” Rhonda said.

They sounded earnest, but Margot was forty years old, and she had learned that human beings were incapable of keeping secrets. When handed a privileged piece of information, the first thing a person wanted to do was share it.

“My father would die,” Margot said. Or at least this was Edge’s position. He believed that Doug would be appalled, their friendship would be strained, and their working relationship ruined. Margot believed her father would take the news in stride. He might even be happy. Doug had not been fond of Drum Sr. He thought Drum Sr. was a spoiled ne’er-do-well. Doug liked and respected Edge; they had been law partners for thirty years. True, Edge’s track record with women wasn’t great. He was paying alimony to three wives; he had four children, the oldest of whom was thirty-six, and the youngest of whom was six. Audrey.

That was how Margot and Edge had ended up together: Ellie and Audrey, both six years old, had taken ballet class at Mme Willette’s studio on Eighty-second and Riverside. Mme Willette’s ballet school was expensive, rigorous, and impossible to get into, but Margot had heard excellent things about it. Mme Willette held her girls to high standards-perfect posture, perfect French pronunciation, not a strand of hair escaping the bun. At the open house, Margot had been captivated by Mme Willette and became determined that Ellie should study with her. She had mastered the admissions game after getting three kids into Ethical Culture Fieldston, and she pursued the prestigious ballet class relentlessly.

Ellie had thrived under Mme Willette’s discipline. She quickly bonded with all the girls in her class, and her favorite ballet friend was a tiny girl with black hair and Asiatic eyes named Audrey. Margot had glimpsed the mother a few times-an elegant, lean woman of indeterminate ethnicity. Ellie begged for a playdate with Audrey, and she claimed that Audrey wanted a playdate with her, but the odd and awkward thing about socializing children in Manhattan was that none of the parents knew each other. And quite frankly, Margot was intimidated by Audrey’s mother. She looked like she lived downtown, although it just as easily could have been Sutton Place. Margot didn’t know if she was a Little Red Schoolhouse mom or a Bank Street mom or a Chapin mom. She might have asked, but she didn’t have the energy, the output, required to forge any new alliances.

And then, one week, Margot went to pick up Ellie from Mme Willette’s-and there, in the foyer, waiting for the class to be let out, was Edge Desvesnes.

“Hi!” Margot had said, her voice containing amazement and confusion. Edge was way out of context here; it was like seeing her dentist at the Union Square Greenmarket, or her childhood minister, Reverend Marlowe, at the hardware store.

Edge had turned to look at her, but she could tell he was having a hard time placing her, as well.

She said, “Margot Carmichael.”

“Oh, my!” he said, and they embraced.

Margot had known Edge Desvesnes since she was a teenager. He and his first wife, Mary Lee, used to come to barbecues at the Carmichael house in Darien. There had been a time when Margot was still in braces and glasses and bad-hair-and-worse-skin when she had a terrible crush on Edge Desvesnes. She remembered once passing hors d’oeuvres at a party that her parents were throwing. After she had served Edge, he had turned to Doug and said, “That’s a beautiful girl you’ve got there, partner. Those eyes.”

And Doug had said, “Don’t I know it.”

Margot had blushed hot and retreated to the kitchen. No one had ever called her “beautiful” before. The boys in Margot’s class were ruthless about her looks. That Mr. Desvesnes, who was cool and funny and cute, had called her “beautiful” was enough to turn Margot’s world upside down.

Beautiful. She had looked at herself in the mirror for months after that, wondering: Am I beautiful? And what had he meant about her eyes?

Margot had seen Edge Desvesnes periodically in the years that followed. He came to dinner to celebrate her parents’ twentieth anniversary, he pulled into the driveway to honk for Doug when they went golfing, he attended Kevin and Beanie’s wedding. Before she ran into him outside the dance class, the last time Margot had seen Edge Desvesnes was at her mother’s funeral. Edge had served as a pallbearer. In Margot’s memory, he had been with a woman, but Margot had been too racked with grief and swarmed by people to notice which woman. She had heard through her father that Edge had divorced, then married, then divorced, then married-but amid the drama of her own life, Margot hadn’t been able to keep up.

Seeing him again so unexpectedly, Margot felt as flushed as she had been at fourteen. She said, “You’re not here for…”

“Waiting for my daughter,” he said.

“Your daughter?” In Margot’s memory, Edge had sons. Two with the first wife, one with the second, or the other way around. Did she remember hearing about a daughter?

“My youngest,” he said. “Audrey.”

Margot said, “Audrey is your daughter? Ellie loves Audrey.” Margot swallowed. She thought of the Indochine beauty. “So your wife…”

“My ex.”

“Oh,” Margot said. “Well, I’ve been meaning to approach her about getting the girls together. I had no idea… I mean, I didn’t know she was your daughter.”

At that moment, the door to the studio opened, and the girls filed out in graceful silence. Ellie reached for the cold water bottle in Margot’s hand. Audrey wrapped her arms around Edge’s waist and squeezed.

“My daughter,” he said.

“Fifty-nine,” Autumn said now. “That’s old. That’s Viagra territory.”

Rhonda laughed at this.

Margot said, “Not quite.”

Things had turned romantic right away. At that very first encounter, they had exchanged cell phone numbers, and by that evening, Margot had a text from Edge that said, You are a knockout, Margot Carmichael.