“Certain things like what?” she asked.

But he hadn’t answered, and Agnes’s world had tilted a little more out of kilter.

Down the beach, some kids were setting off bottle rockets. Agnes let Riley pull her to her feet.

Dabney

She watched Box stride across Elizabeth Jennings’s front lawn toward Cliff Road, where they had parked the Impala. Dabney knew she should follow him, but she couldn’t make herself go.

She wanted to be where Clen was.

The second Box walked out the door, Dabney raised her eyebrows at Clen and said, “What happened, really?”

“He hit me,” Clen said. “Punched me.” He pointed at his chest.

“I find that hard to believe,” Dabney said. “What did you say to him?”

“I know you’d like this to be my fault,” Clen said.

“That’s not true.”

“You need to tell him, Cupe.”

“I know I do. But…”

They were interrupted at that moment by Elizabeth Jennings herself, who came rushing into the room in her usual imperious manner. Dabney knew Elizabeth because Elizabeth had sat on the Chamber of Commerce board of directors for the past eighteen months. If Dabney was very honest, she would admit that she found Elizabeth a bit self-important and her so-called elegance a bit practiced. Elizabeth was popular in Washington circles; she was a hostess along the lines of Sally Quinn and Katharine Graham. What else did Dabney know about her? Her résumé stated that she had attended Mary Washington and worked briefly as an administrative assistant at the State Department. Dabney knew she came from old Washington money; she was related somehow to President Taft. Dabney knew that Elizabeth had had two daughters, and that her husband had died. Dabney did not know that Elizabeth’s husband, Mingus, had been friends (indeed, partners in crime!) with Clendenin Hughes. This was unfortunate indeed.

“I heard there was a brouhaha in here,” Elizabeth said. Her eyes skipped about the room, narrowing in on the rug under the side console, which was askew. She bent to straighten it. When she stood, she glared at Dabney like she was an errant child. “Dare I ask what happened?”

“Oh,” Dabney said. She was afraid to look at Clen. “Nothing.”

“I lost my balance,” Clen said. “Dropped my glass and it broke. I’m very sorry, Elizabeth.”

“I hope you’re all right,” Elizabeth said.

“Fine,” Clen said. “We got the shards picked up but you might want to vacuum in the morning.”

Elizabeth beamed at Clen, as if nothing delighted her more than the thought of pulling out her Dyson or giving an extra instruction to her cleaning lady. Ever the gracious hostess, Dabney supposed.

“And John?” Elizabeth said, addressing Dabney. “Where has he gone off to?”

John? Dabney was temporarily stymied, until she realized that Elizabeth was asking about Box. Nobody called him John. That Elizabeth chose to do so only increased Dabney’s ire.

“He left,” Dabney said bluntly. She had other words at her disposal that would have softened the blow—he had to scoot, he wasn’t feeling well, he was tuckered out after all the excitement at the White House—but Dabney didn’t feel like granting Elizabeth the favor of a lovely excuse.

“Well, he’s very naughty and didn’t say goodbye,” Elizabeth said. She then seemed to take stock of the situation before her—Dabney and Clen alone together in the living room where a glass had broken and an endowed chair of economics at Harvard had left a party without thanking the hostess. Elizabeth Jennings knew nothing of Dabney and Clen’s past—or did she? one could never be certain—but neither was the woman naive. She probably had a good idea about what had transpired, or at least its general nature. She might be mentally sharpening the tines of her gossip fork.

Leave, Dabney thought. Go home, and find some way to apologize to Box. Or end the shenanigans now, and just tell him the truth.

But Dabney did not leave. She headed back onto the deck, ostensibly in search of another glass of vintage Moët & Chandon which she did not need. She was almost instantly captured by the congressman, who apparently had already bored everyone else at the party and hence had no choice but to give Dabney a second helping of his opinions.

Clendenin was at the end of the porch. Elizabeth still held his arm, rather proprietarily, Dabney thought. Jealousy started as a burn at her hairline.

Clendenin and Elizabeth?

The good thing about the congressman was that he didn’t require any actual conversation from her. He talked and Dabney had only to nod along, and at the appropriate moments say, Right, yes, I see, of course.

Clendenin and Elizabeth had spent time together “overseas.” Elizabeth wasn’t afraid to travel; she was a woman who arrived in the lobby of the Oriental Hotel smoking a cigarette in a mother-of-pearl holder while some Thai boy in traditional garb dragged in her Louis Vuitton steamer trunk. But Dabney was being ridiculous. She had seen too many movies.

Dabney drained her champagne quickly and the congressman snapped at a waiter to have it refilled, a gesture born less out of rudeness, she suspected, than out of the fear that Dabney might abandon him for the bar. Another glass of champagne appeared, and a different waiter materialized with fruit tarts that were as pretty as stained glass. Dabney demurred; she couldn’t eat a thing.

Clendenin and Elizabeth. Dabney would lose him to the East—or the burnished memories thereof—again!