Caught up in the magic of this night, though, Ruth didn’t care what anyone thought. She alternated between observing this bougie tribe of hers as if she were an outsider and taking in the actual experience of it. Strutting down State Street, loud and proud, the wind carrying their laughter.

Parading through the Loop, Tess took Penelope’s hand in hers. It was the first time Ruth had seen them publicly act like a couple. A startled expression crossed Penelope’s face for an instant, and then she squeezed Tess’s waist. A subtle yet unmistakable act of possession. Ownership. Not ownership of each other as partners but of themselves, their identities, their place in the world.

At one Yale alumni barbecue, Tess had pulled Ruth to the side. She said, “Don’t ever take this for granted.” Confused, Ruth asked what she meant.

“I mean your husband.” Tess gestured to where Xavier stood getting a hamburger off the grill. “You can bring him here and to your work functions and nobody bats an eye. It’s just routine. Nothing is routine for me.”

The urge to question Tess further passed and they never spoke of it again, but seeing her friend and Penelope showing affection so openly made her realize that something had emboldened them after Election Night.

An odd sense of sadness overtook Ruth when she watched them and how free they’d become. She wanted to move into this new existence with them, but her feet remained stuck in the quicksand of her past. How could she enjoy that kind of ease when she carried something so heavy? Thoughts of her baby boy flooded her mind. She couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d relegated her son to a life of misfortune in Ganton.

When they walked under the el tracks, Ruth spotted a Black man and woman huddled under a blanket, and she suspected they were close to her own age even though they appeared to be twice as old. The woman’s cheeks drooped, and her face had collapsed from all the missing teeth. Her companion, a man in a dingy brown overcoat and red plaid pajama bottoms, pulled a wrinkled, dirt-stained Obama T-shirt from under the blanket and waved it at them. Seeing the ragged couple troubled her on a personal level. Lately, she’d been having the same nightmare about a little boy, waif thin and filthy, in an alley begging for food. In her dream, she reached out to him, but he couldn’t see or hear her.

“Ten dollars! Yes, we can,” the man called out in a tired voice, repeating the familiar campaign slogan.

Consumed by their own revelry, no one in her group seemed to even notice the man’s postelection sales pitch.

The man’s hollowed, bloodshot eyes found hers. When she slowed her stride, he zeroed in on her hesitation. “For you, miss, five dollars.” She held up an empty hand as if to say she had no cash.

Xavier leaned over and whispered in her ear. “Just don’t engage.”

The man tried again. “Hey, lady. At least I’m not out here robbing people. I’m a businessman.” The woman by his side rocked back and forth and Ruth inadvertently shivered, imagining how cold she must have been with only that threadbare blanket for cover.

Ruth refused to meet his eyes again, even as guilt flipped her insides. The only way she assuaged that guilt was to remind herself that she and Xavier made annual donations to charities that qualified as tax-exempt with the IRS. Legitimate organizations with listings in the proper registries.

Tugging at her white coat sleeve, Xavier pulled her along. “C’mon now. I admire that dude’s hustle, but you know those shirts are hot.”

Penelope linked her arm with Ruth’s. “I’d represent you in court, but my fee would be about fifty times as much as that shirt costs. Probably not the wisest financial move.”

“You don’t even do criminal defense work,” Ruth said, welcoming the light banter.

“I took a class in law school. Close enough.”

Ruth allowed herself to be swallowed back into the group as Victor led them toward an empty, rehabbed warehouse. The building stood as a gray ghost, windows boarded up, lips sealed about its industrious past. The rattle of an el train sounded overhead, and Ruth couldn’t imagine any kind of party in this drab place. But no more than a half hour later, the inside was transformed into a white wonderland.

White tables. White linens. White flowers. White wine. Even a white bird squawked in a cage.

“If that ain’t some internalized racial self-hatred, I don’t know what is,” Harvey had said half-jokingly when he declined their invitation to attend. In spite of their coaxing, he’d smiled and said, “Thank you, but I’ll pass.”

If only Harvey could’ve seen how beautiful they were that night. A kaleidoscope of colors. Every shade of black popped against the white backdrop. They were sculptors and scientists. Bankers and builders. The world was their oyster. And they knew it. That had never been truer than now.

They dined on blue cheese canapés with walnuts, melon caprese salads, and Parmesan tortellini bites. Each table and food display more extravagant than the last. No matter how many bougie parties she attended, Ruth would never get used to some of this fancy cuisine. She nibbled and moved food around on the tiny white plate.

What would Eli think of this spread? She and her brother had grown up eating fried baloney, not bologna sandwiches on Wonder bread, and chasing it with red drink. You couldn’t retrain taste buds on a whim. But she had slowly groomed her palate to appreciate decadent desserts. Her contribution for the night: her famous chocolate martinis and Dom Perignon champagne truffles from Teuscher Chocolates on Michigan Avenue. Dark chocolate flown in every week from a kitchen in Zurich, Switzerland.