“Dad wants us over there,” Kevin said. He pointed to the table where Doug was sitting with Pauline and Rhonda.

Margot threw her crumpled, butter-soaked napkin onto her plate. “It’s okay,” she said to Beanie. “You can go. I’m done.”

Kevin said, “I’m sure you’re welcome, too. I think Dad really wants his family around. This is hard for him.”

Margot barked out a laugh. “Yes, Kev, I know it’s hard for him. It’s hard for all of us.”

“But especially hard for Dad,” Kevin said.

Margot gave her brother an incredulous look, which he pretended not to see. She loved how Kevin was now taking the whole family’s emotional temperature and triaging them. But especially hard for Dad. What about Jenna, who was getting married tomorrow without their mother present? What about Margot, who was trying to serve as daughter and sister and surrogate mother? What about poor Pauline-now there was a phrase Margot had never expected to utter-who had to witness all the Beth Carmichael worship and be a good sport about it? And meanwhile her husband was about to divorce her.

Margot pushed her chair away from the table. She said, “I’m going to the ladies’ room. Excuse me.”

Margot stood at the sinks, washing the lobster juices from her hands. It was probably better that Edge wasn’t here, she thought. There was enough drama transpiring as it was. Margot couldn’t imagine having to deal with seeing Edge but not being with him, with having to ignore him, with having to pretend in front of her father and everyone else that they were just casual family friends. Edge had been right: Margot couldn’t handle it.

The toilet flushed inside one of the stalls, and Jenna stepped out.

When Margot saw her sister in the mirror, she grinned. She felt like she hadn’t seen Jenna in weeks.

“Hey!” Margot said. “That dress is foxy.”

Jenna’s rehearsal dinner dress was one place where Jenna and Margot had blatantly disregarded their mother’s advice in the Notebook. Beth Carmichael had suggested something conservative-a linen sheath, or a flowered print.

“Linen sheaths and flowered prints are what I wear to work,” Jenna said. “I want something sexier!”

Margot and Jenna had shopped for a dress in SoHo, and Margot had to admit that it had been almost the best part of the wedding preparations, probably because the task was infused with a sense of lawlessness. They were defying the Notebook!

They found the peach dress at the Rebecca Taylor boutique. It was a backless halter dress with delicate petals embellishing the short skirt. Jenna had a perfect body, and the dress showed it off.

Jenna did not smile back at Margot. Instead she opened her straw clutch purse and took out lip gloss. “What is going on with Dad?” she said.

Margot grabbed fifteen paper towels in a nervous flurry. “Dad?” she said.

Jenna leaned toward the mirror and dabbed at her lips with the wand. “I know you know,” she said. “Please just tell me.”

“I’m not sure what you’re talking about,” Margot said.

“Don’t bullshit me!” Jenna cried, waving the gloss in one hand and the wand in the other like an irate orchestra conductor. “I’m sick of it!”

“Sick of what?” Margot said.

“Of you and Kevin and Nick always keeping things from me. Trying to protect me. I’m twenty-nine years old; I can handle it, Margot. Just please tell me what the hell is going on with Dad.”

Now was the moment in the family wedding saga when Margot had to weigh her loyalties. But she still had one more chance to stall.

“I think he’s feeling melancholy about tomorrow,” Margot said. “Giving away his little girl, throwing this wedding without Mom. I suggested he finally read the last page of the Notebook. Do you know if he did that?”

“Margot,” Jenna said.

“What?”

“Tell me.”

Margot studied herself and her sister in the mirror, and Jenna did the same.

Sisters, Margot thought. Eleven years between them, but still, there was no bond closer than sisters.

“He asked me not to tell anyone,” Margot said.

“Tell me anyway.”

Margot sighed. The yacht club ladies’ room wasn’t a great place to tell a secret. And yet it had been in this very bathroom that Margot had told her mother she was pregnant. It was during the Commodore’s Ball, Labor Day weekend, 2000, at the end of Margot’s second summer of dating Drum. Drum’s father had set up an internship for him at Sony, but Drum had decided to turn it down. He wanted to go back out to Aspen to ski one more time, he said. Margot had just accepted an entry-level position with Miller-Sawtooth; she was headed to adult life in the city. It looked like a breakup was imminent.

But then Margot had started feeling funny: tired, dizzy, nauseous. She had abruptly left the table during the Commodore’s Ball after being served a tomato filled with crab salad. And her mother, sensing something wrong, had followed Margot into the ladies’ room and had crowded into the stall with her and held her hair while Margot hurled.

Margot, teary eyed, had stared into the pukey toilet water and said, “I think I’m pregnant.”

Beth had said, “Yes, I think you are.”

Whoa. Margot sensed her mother’s presence so strongly at that moment that she steadied herself with both hands on the cool porcelain edge of the sink.

Looking at Jenna in the mirror-so much easier than looking at her directly-Margot said, “Dad is going to ask Pauline for a divorce.”

Jenna closed her eyes and bowed her head. “Please tell me you’re kidding.”

“Um, no,” Margot said. “Not kidding. He said he doesn’t love her. I think… I think he’s just still really in love with Mom.”

Jenna’s eyes filled with tears, and Margot became confused. Did Jenna have a strong alliance with Pauline that Margot didn’t know about? Did Jenna love Pauline? Pauline was fine, she was okay, on a good day she could be sort of fun-at Halloween, she dressed up as a witch to give the children of Silvermine candy bars-but Margot had no attachment to Pauline, and she assumed her siblings didn’t, either.

“Hey,” Margot said, patting Jenna’s back.

“It’s just…” Jenna said.

The door to the ladies’ room flew open, so that music floated in. The band was playing more Sinatra-“I’ve Got the World on a String” (her mother’s suggestion of “only standards” had been obeyed). By now, Margot guessed, the blueberry cobbler had been served. She glanced up to see who was coming in.

For the sake of poetry, Margot half expected to find Rhonda, or possibly even Pauline herself, entering, so she was taken aback to see… Finn.

Finn wore a silver Herve Leger bandage dress, which Margot knew to cost fifteen hundred dollars. Finn’s hair was a mess, and she appeared flushed. Her cheeks were bright red with sunburn, and her eyes were shining and manic.

Margot thought, Oh, God, no. He didn’t.

“Hi!” Finn said. She was glowing. She would have glowed with a paper bag over her head.

He did.

Jenna spun around so quickly that her skirt flared; it was like a Solid Gold dance move, and Margot would have laughed had it not been for Jenna’s tone of voice. In twenty-nine years of knowing her sister, Margot had never heard Jenna speak sharply to anyone, but now her voice was a glinting dagger.

“Where the hell have you been?”

Finn gnawed her lower lip, and Margot could tell she was trying not to burst out in an explosion of bubbles and rose petals.

Jenna looked at an imaginary watch. “It’s eight thirty. You were supposed to be at the church for the rehearsal at five. Three and a half hours ago. Where have you been?”

“Um…” Finn said.

“You’re my best friend!” Jenna cried. “I needed you with me. When you needed me last night, what did I do?”

Silence from Finn, who now looked appropriately contrite.

“I went home with you!” Jenna shouted. “I left my own bachelorette party, which Margot had been planning for months. I went home and let you cry on my shoulder about what an asshole Scott is. Oh-and he is an asshole!”

Margot watched her sister with near-anthropological interest. She was watching the first-ever fight between Jenna and Finn. Jenna could be a spitfire. Who knew?

Finn’s face dissolved. She was going to revert to type and cry. This Margot could have predicted, and she further predicted that, upon seeing Finn’s tears, Jenna would relent and apologize for her tone. But instead Jenna grew fiercer.

“Answer me,” Jenna said. “Where were you?”

“With Nick,” Finn said. “Paddleboarding at the beach, then trying to get home from the beach.” Here she flicked her eyes at Margot. “Then we took showers and got dressed at home, then came right here.”

No, Margot thought. It had not taken two hours for them to shower, dress, and walk the half mile over here.

“Did something happen?” Jenna asked. “Did something happen between you and Nick?”

Margot couldn’t bear to hear the answer. She didn’t want Finn to admit the truth, and she didn’t want to hear her lie. Margot put up a hand. “I’m leaving,” she said. “You two can finish this in peace.”

“Thank you,” Finn whispered.

As Margot pushed open the door to leave, she heard Jenna say, “Tell me the truth!”

Outside, in the corridor, Margot surveyed the happenings in the rest of the club. It was, from the look of things, a lovely party. The band was playing “One for My Baby (and One More for the Road).” Margot’s father was dancing with Beanie, Kevin was dancing with Rhonda, Ryan’s boyfriend was dancing with Pauline. Nick was standing in the doorway of the kitchen, eating what appeared to be a club sandwich off a paper plate. Unlike Finn, Nick was not radiating ecstasy and moonbeams. He seemed his usual nonchalant, nonplussed self, maybe even a little subdued. Perhaps he was bummed because he’d missed the lobster buffet, or perhaps he was suffering guilty pangs about the sex acts he had just performed with the newly married childhood neighbor girl.