Sloane wore ivory that did little to hide five months of pregnancy, and Damon moved through it all lit up with the particular joy of a man who has turned his own wedding into a showcase of his success; he had even set up a small display near the terrace promoting a new real estate venture backed by Rothwell Global.

I arrived alone.

I wore a dark navy dress and the simple pearl earrings that had been my grandmother’s, and I carried one manila folder under my arm, and I had left Aurora at home in the safe and loving arms of my sister, because whatever was about to happen was not going to happen anywhere near my daughter.

I chose the pearls deliberately, and I want to say why, because they were the whole of my armor that day and I needed them to be.

For five years Priscilla had let me know, in a hundred small ways, that I was not quite the right sort of woman for her son — too soft, too sentimental, my body a waiting room, my grandmother’s slow modest wealth somehow less than the flashier money her family chased.