“Funny.

Half an hour ago the two of you spent the whole night talking about her to strangers.”

What none of them understood, in that first stunned minute, was how much Lenore had chosen not to say — and that the mercy of the omissions was itself a kind of power they had never seen her wield.

She could have stood at that microphone and told the truth about the afternoon: that Crispin had informed her, in their own kitchen, that he needed a woman with real presence at his side, and had left for the gala with that woman on his arm while his wife did the dishes.

She could have named Odette.

She could have described eight years of being introduced as a hobbyist, of dinners she cooked and cleared while the family she’d married into called her a temporary employee.