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George, already quite milky in complexion, paled further. “I don’t know what you mean?” The response trailed off into a question, and Maggie almost laughed.

“Of course not. You’ll be pleased to learn, I think,” she leaned in, and so did George, her eyes wide, “that we had a very serious talk with Jacob about his fighting style.”

“A brawler, is he? Sounds tragic.” George looked around the room, her color now rising slightly. “I don’t condone violence, myself.”

“You aren’t very quick on your feet,” Maggie smiled. “But that’s all right. If you practice, you’ll be lying like a professional in no time.”

George’s face scrunched up, looking sour. “What did you think of the book?” she asked, lifting her copy meekly.

“I thought it was very … provocative?” It had been rather scandalous, in Maggie’s opinion, and she was grateful neither Tom nor Bridgers had asked her about it. “You?”

“Oh, I didn’t read it,” George replied, plopping the book onto the table now empty of papers. “I don’t think anyone did. Is it too early for wine?”

Maggie hoped not, having been holding a cup of it for ten minutes. “What do you mean, no one read it?” If she had known it would have been possible to attend a meeting about a book without reading the book, she could have saved herself quite a bit of time. And blushing.

“Oh, hardly anyone reads it, from what Mrs. Cavenhill says,” George said, ambling her way to the wine. “This is mostly an excuse to get away from husbands for an afternoon, I think.”

“Do you have a husband to get away from?” Maggie asked, sipping from her cup. Early afternoon wine was underrated.

“Not me,” said George. “Never bothered.”

“… certainly not the same as mine,” came a throaty voice from across the room. Davina Hatterson, drawing herself up to her full height, leered at Lou, who, for her part, looked entirely unimpressed and merely shrugged her shoulders.

“I’m just saying, Davina,” she said lightly, “if you really want to stand out”—a bizarre thing to say to a woman wearing a radical shade of purple—“you’d come commission some more things from us. No two pieces are the same,” she concluded with a smile. “That’s the Roslyn Haberdashery promise.”

“We have a promise?” Maggie asked, trying to catch up.

“Of course we do,” Lou hissed. “Don’t ruin this for me.”

Not wanting to be a ruiner of anything, Maggie floated over to Laura, who immediately enveloped her into an ongoing conversation.

“What I said,” Laura said to Margie-not-Maggie and also Maggie, since she was there, “was that the book was a bit scandalous, but of course what David heard was, I’m reading filth and I cannot wait to act out the particularly naughty bits with you.”

Margie tittered—there really was no other word for it—and emitted a high, “Oh, my.” Maggie, now pleasantly light-headed from post-lunch wine, smiled. “David always seems so reserved,” she said. She had always privately assumed that David was the anchor of the family, keeping Theo’s head out of the clouds and Jake … well, honest. She certainly never imagined him naughty.

“He isn’t with me,” Laura said brightly. “In fact, he’s quite rude at times.” She looked extraordinarily pleased with herself.

Maggie sipped her wine, and listened to Lou preach, and settled into the group like a vat of melting butter.

Maggie stepped through the door of the apartment three hours later, not quite drunk but undeniably unsteady on her feet, and stopped dead in the kitchen. A heavy silence hung over the room like a fog; she took a tentative step in, hating the crawling sensation under her skin. “Hello?”

No one replied, and her unease grew. “Tom?” She dropped her useless book onto the kitchen table and pressed further into the apartment, listening for any sound. The boys were never this quiet. Bridgers was typically ranting about something, or Tom was sighing, or they were lovingly bickering across the room, and she knew that something was profoundly, incontrovertibly wrong. “Bridge?”

“In the living room,” came Bridgers’ voice. It was low and thick, and sounded like someone else entirely.

She poked her head through the door, heart thrumming unevenly, and froze. Bridgers sat on the divan, his back ramrod-straight, feet planted flat on the floor, hands resting beside his thighs, palm-up. A glass of a clear liquid was on the side table, untouched.

“Bridge?” Maggie tried to modulate her voice, but her pulse was thudding loudly in her ears, and she could feel the alcohol making her sluggish.

“Hullo, dove,” he said dully. He didn’t look at her.

“What’s happened?” She forced herself to move, sitting beside him and automatically drawing his hand into her lap.

“Tom left,” he said, still staring at the wall. His hand was limp in hers; he didn’t blink.

The two words were as foreign as Greek to Maggie, and she experienced a moment of genuinely blank confusion as they settled around her. “He what?”

Bridgers reached for the glass. “He left. He went to live somewhere else.” He picked up the glass with his free hand, took a sip, winced. “We had an argument and decided that some distance would be best.” His spine relaxed, and he slumped into the divan.