anonymous source, but it was an open secret that biotech golden girl Katie McFarland held the purse strings; that is, until her miracle medical testing method was proven to be a fraud, and now she was under federal indictment. Unless Straight Up found a buyer, the site would be gone by Labor Day and all the journalists who believed in the mission and had left their steady gigs at more established outlets would be out of work, including Serena.

But that night, at the party at the company HQ in DC’s trendy Shaw neighborhood, all was right in Serena’s world. The new job was a dream, the man she’d been seeing for a few months was someone she really liked and who seemed to really like her in return, even though he was in the middle of a messy divorce. Plus, she’d finally found a decent hairdresser in DC who truly understood long layers, tough to find in the home of the conservative blunt cut. When she won the raffle prize, her editor Jonah, a brilliant journalist from Brooklyn who’d risen from the City College of New York to run a respected news organization, had joked that Serena would finally have proof she was really 100 percent WASP. Serena had laughed a bit too loud and too long, because there were mojitos involved and she’d had a crush on Jonah since they’d worked together at the Post.

Serena’s pedigree did seem unimpeachable. She was the only child of Mitchell and Rebecca “Birdie” Tucker, formerly of Southport, Connecticut, now of Hobe Sound, Florida. Her father, a Williams man, owned a small insurance empire that his grandfather had started at the turn of the twentieth century, and her mother, Birdie, a Vassar girl, chaired the board of the venerated Pequot Library and had won the club championships in tennis for most of the 1980s and ’90s, her dominant run stopped only by a rotator cuff injury that even Tommy John surgery couldn’t fix. Mitchell collected electric trains and had turned their attic into his sanctuary, constructing a massive Alpine Village, complete with tracks, Swiss chalets, and cows grazing in meadows. Birdie was more than happy to never bother him when he was playing with his trains. Mitchell and Birdie interacted when necessary and with extreme politeness, making them the perfect couple.

Serena did as she was told without much fuss. Valedictorian at Green Farms Academy, a comp lit major at Vassar, masters at Columbia School of Journalism. She played tennis and vacationed in Nantucket the first two weeks of August every summer without any pushback, even though it could be deadly boring with the same people doing the same things every year.

Serena’s mother always referred to her as “a serious girl,” probably because she spent more time listening to NPR and watching the news than chasing down the best party or the cutest guy. She’d never be social enough for her mother, who was disappointed Serena didn’t want to be a debutante, opting to do a study abroad program in Prague instead.

After grad school, Serena was primed for a life as a network morning show producer, the sort of idealized New York City rom-com career that her mother, a former associate producer at NBC News, had envisioned for herself but abandoned after marriage and motherhood. Birdie was determined that her daughter would have the career she didn’t, orchestrating an entrée through a contact. Her college roommate’s daughter was a producer at the Today show and Birdie arranged a dinner in the city for the two girls, convinced Serena would make an impression that would set her up for a life that included a tasteful Chelsea loft during the week and summer weekends in Southport. After working for a few years and securing a producer spot, Serena would be ready for a husband and child, all while maintaining a solid forehand and enviable fitness. Birdie could see her daughter’s future and it was respectable.

But Serena surprised her parents by taking a less glamorous job in DC

after grad school as a beat reporter. Bitten by the political bug in college and fascinated by the changing global landscape post-9/11, Serena settled in at the Washington Post as a national security reporter covering the Pentagon with the intent to inform and educate the American public, causing Birdie to tell anyone who asked, “She’s working for that liberal rag. She won’t last six months.” Fifteen years later, Serena had carved out a career as a solid journalist, spending several years at the Hague bureau, reporting on international justice, before jumping to Slate, where she had reported on the State Department. The Washington scene suited Serena, somehow both global and clubby at the same time. She never felt out of her comfort zone.

At Straight Up, she focused on the intersection of diplomacy, national security, and human rights, a beat that was both professionally ambitious and personally satisfying. She’d become a regular on some political podcasts, providing a measured, well-reported point of view to counter-balance the hosts’ outrage.

For Birdie, who had doubted that writing for a website was a legitimate career move, the podcast appearances sealed her impression that Serena’s career had stalled mid-level. (As Birdie told her bridge club, “She used to

be a journalist, but now she’s what they call a blogger and a podcaster. All that education . . .”) Serena’s personal life had disappointed her mother almost more than her professional life.

For eight years, as she was building her career, Serena lived with another reporter named Ben Cohen in a renovated Georgetown row house near Dumbarton Oaks that she bought thanks to the trust fund her paternal grandmother had set up for her. (It was one thing to work as a journalist; it was another thing to live like one. Serena kept her private life very private from most of her colleagues, but it involved quality cashmere, French wine, and top-tier vacations, plus board positions on several charities normally out of reach for members of the press.) With Ben, it was no ring, no commitment, no kids, not even a cat, and Serena was fine with the arrangement. Ben made her laugh and didn’t put any pressure on Serena to return the favor. Ben liked Serena for her integrity and her focus, not exactly the sort of qualities that might stand out in an OkCupid profile. In short, Serena felt secure with Ben. They talked about work and Washington and work again, eating takeout from neighborhood restaurants and watching CNN and Frontline.

Ben being Jewish wasn’t exactly a big hit in the Tucker family, so it was hard to imagine a scenario that ended with a tasteful family wedding in the Tucker backyard under a green-and-white-striped tent with a Lester Lanin band playing. Still, Birdie managed to be on her best behavior the few times Ben came to Southport for the weekend, and her father, now retired, had basically checked out of any conversation that didn’t involve trains, insurance, or his hero George Will, so his input was minimum. Some of the weekends felt like months.

When Ben moved out, shocking Serena by saying that it was time he found a nice Jewish girl he could marry and start a family with, she was thirty-five. She honestly thought he was kidding as he packed up his record collection, which was heavy on jazz and light on anything hummable, but a trip home to Scarsdale for his grandmother’s ninetieth birthday had convinced Ben that he needed to get serious about his future with a woman who was less blond, more nurturing. “I think I need someone who is . . .

more familiar with my background,” Ben explained, without making eye contact once with Serena. His wedding announcement was in the New York Times a year later, to a woman named Tamar, twenty-seven, who was the director of fundraising at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in DC and a

Duke graduate. (According to the announcement, they had met in a Jewish Singles Ski Club, which infuriated Serena because for years she had tried to get Ben to ski out west with her and he had always refused, saying, “My people are doctors, not skiers.”)

“Well, you’re a done deal now,” her mother pronounced that Thanksgiving, after a few glasses of wine. She told Serena that they were selling the house in Southport and moving to Florida full time, adding,

“Why stay in the Northeast if there will be no grandchildren?” It was a harsh assessment, even for her mother, who specialized in cutting rebukes.

Serena’s mother hadn’t seemed to enjoy motherhood that much; she was surprised that Birdie wanted grandchildren at all. When Serena commented as much, Birdie responded, “It’s what’s expected. What else are we to do for the next ten years?”

Serena had no reply.

She was relieved, not that Ben was gone, but that her parents would be.