Chapter 2

The first person to move was Margaret. She stepped forward, touched Helen's elbow, and whispered something Helen couldn't hear over the roaring in her ears. Then Margaret turned and walked toward the house, and one by one, the guests followed her — a silent procession of aunts and uncles and old friends, their goodbyes abandoned, their glasses still half-full. The string quartet packed their instruments in under a minute, without a word. A waiter began, very quietly, to scrape the ruined cake off the stone with a plastic spatula, working around Chloe, who stood trembling at the edge of the fire pit with her hand held out in front of her like a wounded wing.

"Marcus," Chloe hissed, still not looking at him. "Your mother just burned my bag. She burned my Chanel. Your mother is insane. Say something."

Marcus's mouth worked. He looked at the fire pit, where the last of the bag's shape was collapsing into a pile of glowing embers and blackened wire. He looked at his mother, who was standing very still, her hands clasped in front of her, her gaze level and unreachable. He looked at his wife, whose mascara was running, whose carefully arranged waves had come loose from their pins, who was practically vibrating with fury and who needed him — needed him to do something, to say something, to fix the world back into its proper shape where she did not lose and he did not choose.

He opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.

"I— Mom."

Helen waited. She gave him the full gift of her attention, the way she had given it to him when he was six and had broken his grandmother's vase and had come to her with tears in his eyes. She had not raised her voice then, either. She had simply waited for him to decide what kind of man he would be.

Marcus made his choice. It was the same choice he always made. "You shouldn't have done that," he said, but his voice was not angry. It was pleading. He was asking her to understand that he had no power here, that Chloe was a force he could not resist, that his mother should have known better than to make him pick.

Helen's smile did not waver. "I shouldn't have done what, Marcus? Spent four years being a doormat? Or stopped being one at my own birthday party?"