All non-resident guests are to vacate the premises within fifteen minutes.

The primary occupants have until five o’clock this afternoon to surrender the keys.”

For a moment nobody moved.

And then the garden came apart.

It was not dignified.

Nothing about wealthy people fleeing a scandal ever is.

Champagne glasses were set down on any surface or abandoned on the grass.

The performance of leisure evaporated in an instant, and a hundred people who a moment before had been Stephanie Vance’s dearest friends discovered urgent reasons to be anywhere else, and hurried toward the long line of expensive cars in the drive, glancing back over their shoulders as they went — not with sympathy, but with the wide-eyed relief of people who have just watched a building collapse and are grateful they were standing across the street.