Her dark glasses went wet with it; wine ran down her cheeks, along her neck, across the front of her dress.

“Mom!” Emily shot to her feet.

Robert rose beside her.

And Grace — Grace did not scream.

She did not cry out, or flinch away, or give Victoria the collapse she was surely hoping to see.

She simply reached out through the air, calmly, for her husband’s hand.

Robert found it immediately, as though he had been waiting for exactly that reach, and he gently wiped the wine from his wife’s face with his napkin, unhurried, tender, and then he looked at Victoria with such controlled coldness that every other voice in the room disappeared.

“I won’t forget what you just did,” he said.