Belinda was standing sentry right inside the front door.

“What are you doing, Mother?” Angie asked. She grabbed the handle of the suitcase and headed up the stairs.

Belinda followed her. “That friend of yours is darling.”

“He’s not a friend of mine,” Angie said. “He was a friend of Deacon’s. JP was the one who found Deacon out back.”

Belinda’s voice fell flat. “Oh.”

Angie ducked into her bedroom, where her eyes fell on her old dollhouse. She could remember rearranging the furniture again and again with Scarlett. She remembered setting out butter and eggs on the rough-hewn kitchen table and saving the three-tiered party cake and the tiny, tiny teacups for the formal dining room. The living room sofa was upholstered in rose chintz, with throw pillows the size of postage stamps. Angie had loved very few physical things as much as she had loved that dollhouse. She sighed.

“I’ll switch rooms with you,” Belinda said. “This room doesn’t even have a closet. At least Clara’s room has a closet. Of course, it’s filled with skeletons.”

“I don’t need a closet,” Angie said. “I didn’t bring any couture.”

“Please, darling, don’t be nasty,” Belinda said. “This is all hard enough for me as it is.”

Angie lay down on her bed. The pillowcases smelled like home. At least that was comforting. “Go away, Mother.”

Belinda shut the door, but she was still inside the room. This was not okay, but had Angie expected her mother to change? Here was her modus operandi. She was largely absent, away on location, but when she was around, she didn’t leave Angie alone for one second. Angie was twenty-six years old, and Belinda was a helicopter parent.

“I think your father would want you to get a boyfriend,” Belinda said.

“I have a boyfriend,” Angie said. She squeezed her eyes shut. This always happened: she gave over precious pieces of information just to prove to Belinda that she didn’t know everything.

“Who is it?” Belinda asked.

“No one,” Angie said. Joel Tersigni, she thought. She longed to say his name out loud. The problem with conducting a secret love affair was that she couldn’t talk about it with anyone. If Angie had had a close girlfriend, one she could have confided in, then the situation might be a tiny bit more bearable. Growing up, Angie had had Scarlett, who was the person she told the things she couldn’t tell her mother. Then, in high school, there had been Pierpont Jones. Pierpont had been fun and wild but not great with secrets. In culinary school and in the kitchen at work, Angie’s friends had all been men.

Could she tell Belinda about Joel? Angie wondered. Would it make things better between them, or would Belinda take the information and ruin it, the way she ruined everything?

Angie knew what her mother would say. She would tell Angie to call Joel and figure out what was going on. She would say, You deserve to be treated with respect. And she would be right.

Angie stood up. “Excuse me,” she said. “I have to make a phone call.”

She walked past her mother, out of the room, down the stairs, and out of the house. When she got a signal at the bottom of the driveway, Angie dialed Joel’s number. There was no way he was going to answer. Joel was a coward. Why had it taken Angie so long to realize this?

The phone rang once, then a woman’s voice said, “Hello, Angie.”

Angie stammered. “I-I-”

“This is Dory Tersigni, Angie,” the woman said.

Hang up! Angie thought. Hang up! Joel had handed his phone off to Dory-or, more likely, Dory had stolen Joel’s phone and had been waiting for Angie to call.

“I know you’ve been having an affair with my husband,” Dory said. “Since December twentieth, after the Christmas party. I know the affair took place primarily in your apartment on East Seventy-Third Street. I know there were texts-literally thousands of texts-as well as explicit photos, and hundreds of phone calls. I know everything, Angie.”

Angie opened her mouth to speak. Retaliate! she thought. She knew things, too. She knew that Dory was an anorexic and a bulimic, that she was a corn-husk doll, dry and unappealing in bed, unable to meet Joel’s voracious sexual appetite. She knew that Dory controlled Joel with money, and guilt about the boys. She knew Dory was a crackerjack attorney, a bulldog in negotiations, tough and unrelenting. She never loses, Joel had told Angie once, but he had made that seem like a negative. Now that Angie found herself in direct competition with Dory, Angie wished for a less formidable opponent.

“I’d like to speak to Joel, please,” Angie said.

“That’s not going to happen,” Dory said. “Your little fling is over.”

“‘Fling,’” Angie said.

“What?” Dory said.

“It wasn’t a fling,” Angie said. “I’m in love with him. And he’s in love with me.”

“Joel Tersigni doesn’t know what love is,” Dory said. “Do you know who he was sleeping with before you?”

“Excuse me?” Angie said.

“Karen, the hostess. And Winnie before that. You’re just one in a long line. Although I have to admit, I’m surprised. He prefers blonds, the paler the better.”

“Stop,” Angie whispered.

“You’re sleeping with my husband, and you want me to stop? I’ll tell you who’s going to stop. You are going to stop. If you call or text or email or smoke-signal Joel ever again, I will call the press and tell them about the disgusting shenanigans going on behind the scenes at Deacon Thorpe’s restaurant. You’re not just an anonymous citizen, Angie Thorpe. Your father was a celebrity, and your mother is an even bigger celebrity. I’m sure the tabloids would eat this up!”

“Please,” Angie said. “My father is dead.” With those words, Angie started to cry. Finally, she thought. It felt like rain after a drought; it felt so good, and yet Angie hated that it was Dory who had elicited the tears. “My father is dead!”

“I didn’t know Deacon well,” Dory said. “But it’s probably safe to say he would have been ashamed of you. Any parent would be.”

The conviction of Dory’s statement took Angie’s breath away. Deacon would have been ashamed. He would have been disappointed. Deacon, no doubt, had known about Joel’s affairs with Karen and Winnie, the two vapid blondes who had worked the front of the house with Joel. Eye candy, the guys in the kitchen called them. Winnie had been at the Board Room for only three or four months. Joel must have moved in on her right away, and possibly it was their breakup that had caused Winnie to quit without giving any notice.

“I’m sorry,” Angie whispered. “Dory, I’m sorry.”

She waited for a response, but there was none. Dory had hung up.

LAUREL

The first full day had been something of a roller coaster, and Laurel, for one, was relieved when she could pour herself a glass of wine.

“Another for me,” Belinda said. “Please, Laurel.”

“And one for me,” Hayes said. “Please, Mom.”

Laurel opened a new chilled bottle of the Cloudy Bay. She poured a glass for Belinda, who was wearing black jeans and a black silk blouse, as if she were about to see a foreign film at the Angelika. Hayes was in cargo shorts and a ripped Ramones T-shirt. He hadn’t shaved in a week, and his eyes were rimmed in red. He smelled god-awful. Would it be too mom-like of her to suggest he take a shower before dinner, the way she used to when he was a teenager? In recent years Laurel had grown used to Hayes being well-coiffed and beautifully dressed. He liked his suits cut close to the body; he wore Robert Graham shirts in colorful patterns and expensive silk ties and Italian shoes. He had experimented with facial hair-goatee, soul patch, sideburns-but he had never looked messy or disheveled the way he did today. He looked, Laurel thought, like one of her clients at Social Services. And he was scratching the hell out of his arm, which set off a distant bell.

She thought, Drugs?

He had smoked weed in high school, and she assumed he’d experimented with cocaine and LSD at some point in college. She wished he were still dating Whitney Jo. Whitney Jo had been from the prairies of Kansas. She wore trucker hats over her braids. She had a wholesome, pearly-white smile and was utterly without guile.

Laurel had an urge to ask about Whitney Jo, but that would really be an annoying mom thing to do.

She raised her glass. “Cheers, honey,” she said to Hayes. “I realize getting here was an epic poem.”

They touched glasses. Hayes drank deeply, then scratched his arm.

He said, “I don’t think I told you this, but the cabdriver who brought Angie and me here was the same guy who drove Dad from the ferry. He remembered the address.”

“Did he know what had happened?” Laurel asked.

“He knew,” Hayes said. “Safe to say, at this point, the whole world knows.” He scratched his arm. Laurel didn’t like the scratching. Narcotics, she thought. Opiates.

Laurel ground fresh pepper over the steaks. “Tonight is going to be simple,” she said. “Steaks and asparagus. Tomorrow night, Angie is cooking.”

“Monday, after we spread the ashes, we should have pizza,” Hayes said. “In honor of Dad.”

“That’s a wonderful idea, sweetheart,” Laurel said.

“I thought so, too!” Hayes said enthusiastically. Too enthusiastically? Now Laurel was hypersensitive. “I’m going up to my room for a hit.”

“What?” Laurel said.

“I’m going up to my room for a bit,” he said. He picked up his glass and disappeared from the kitchen.

Leaving Laurel with… Belinda.

“How is Angie doing?” Laurel asked.

“I have no idea,” Belinda said. “She tells me nothing. She let it slip that she has a boyfriend, but then she wouldn’t say who it was. I think… well, I think maybe she was making it up.”