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connection, however mundane. She and Duncan were both tired in the evening, so they didn’t read to each other in bed anymore before turning out the light. He never looked at her when she changed clothes, never noticed the lacy new bra she’d bought, or the three inches she had cut off her hair. They had become roommates.
    And then there had been the day last year when Duncan had come home and announced that he had quit his job at Covington & Burling (“Covetous & Boring,” as he had long referred to it) and taken a job at the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project, a nonprofit that worked to free prisoners who had been wrongly convicted. Alice had known that he found his work at Covington dull, but had no idea he had been researching jobs with nonprofits, or that he had even a remote interest in the plight of potentially innocent prisoners. It surprised her as much as if he’d told her he’d decided to quit the law for a career as a trapeze artist or a plumber, something completely out of left field. Their income dropped by more than half—a significant life change that she thought Duncan should at least have discussed with her first.
    All of this came to her as Wren danced onstage, her strong, wiry body moving with an intensity that startled Alice, that made her look at dancing in a way she had never imagined. All Wren’s anger, her sense of injustice, emanated from her body onstage, the taut line of her neck, the fierce height of her leaps. Alice had never seen Wren like this. If only Duncan had reacted with this kind of passion to everything that had happened with Wren, or to the chain of events it had unleashed . . .
    â€œI’ve never seen her dance like that,” she said to him, as they waited in the lobby for Wren after the performance.
    â€œLike what?”
    â€œWith that kind of intensity. She’s thirteen, and yet she understood that character. I think what happened last fall really changed her.”
    â€œI am not a fan of that song,” Duncan said.
    â€œI figured. But Wren—” Wren had danced like someone who understood what it felt like to want to be loved and to fear disapproval and to seethe over betrayal. But Alice couldn’t say that to Duncan.
    â€œShe just seemed more involved with the dance this time,” Alice said.
    â€œI guess.” Duncan’s eyes brushed past her, over the crowd.
    Alice felt small, compressed with guilt, as she had for weeks now. She turned her attention from Duncan to the familiar faces she saw in the lobby, the parents she knew whose children had gone through preschool and kindergarten and elementary and now middle school with Wren, who showed up at all the soccer games and concerts and field days, as involved as they could possibly be. Alice wondered how many of them really knew what their middle schoolers were like.
    Wren rushed up to them, flushed, breathless. “There’s a party to celebrate the end of the season at Annie’s house,” she said. “Can I go? Her parents are home. Her mom will drive us there. I’ll call you when I need a ride home.”
    Duncan shrugged. “Sounds okay.”
    â€œWhoa,” Alice said.
    â€œWhat?” Duncan and Wren both turned to look at her.
    Alice didn’t really have an objection, at least not a rational one. She just had the same gut-clenching protective instinct she had to everything involving Wren now.
    â€œWell,” Alice said. “Who else will be there?”
    â€œThe dance team girls, Mom. Annie, Lily, Rachel, Nicole, Ally—the usual.”
    â€œLiza? Emilie?”
    â€œNo.”
    Duncan raised one eyebrow at her, something she had once found endearing but now found annoying. Duncan, so essentially good-natured and decent, did not understand the Machiavellian machinations of adolescent girls. He had always viewed the world as a kind and welcoming and safe place—or at least he had until a month ago. He assumed