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the gums.” She reached for the serving utensil in Kate’s hand. “You’re going to need a pal and here’s the first thing I’m going to do for you. Karl probably filled Peter’s head with so much crap about what jerks lawyers can be, your poor husband looks as though he needs his mommy.” She handed Kate a piece of cake, a fork, and a napkin. “I’ll take over here. Go to the boy’s rescue.”
    Kate smiled, thanked Joanie for her understanding, and went to Peter’s side. She took his right hands in hers, kissed him on the cheek, and said, “You look like you could use a friend, Pete. Anything I can do?”
    “Shooting me would be good. I can’t believe what Karl just told me. I can’t fucking believe it.”
    “Peter, not here. Look, I brought you some cake. Let’s not spoil Sarah’s night. Let’s get her home, drive Mack’s baby sitter to her house, and talk all night.”
    “All night won’t be long enough to get what he told me out of my head.”
    “What is it? Talk to me for two minutes and then we’ll go find Sarah.”
    Peter repeated what Karl had said. Kate had heard enough of their conversation on the way into the cafeteria to surmise the worst. This had moved far beyond the rumors on Andrew’s business card.
    “There is nothing to the allegations.”
    “I can’t believe what little we have left will be exhausted paying lawyers to deal with this nonsense. I need you to go through your emails and phone logs and whatever records you have so I can at least get a small piece of comfort that what the lawyers are saying isn’t true. I saw you talking to Brandon. Please don’t tell me you don’t have any time to do that because you now need to run off to Madagascar for him.”
    Kate stopped short of reminding Peter she needed to do everything Ed Roth asked of her because she was carrying both the household and their future on her back.
    Sarah was looking around the cafeteria, as if she were wondering why her parents weren’t holding her as close as the other kids in the orchestra. “C’mon, Peter. Let’s go be with Sarah. It’s not fair to her.” She took his wrist and began walking toward her.
    “And then you decided to sell the Leger without even talking to me.”
    Kate stopped. “I asked Connie what the market for the painting might be in this market. Nothing more. I know what it means to you.”
    When they had returned from London, Art News had sent a reporter and photographer up to Scarsdale and ran a feature touting Peter and Kate as the new young aristocracy. Kate thought the whole thing was a lark. Peter, though, seemed to define himself as a man who owned one important painting, with more on the way.
    “And the Amigo bid? What exactly did Jack say?”
    Kate hesitated. She hadn’t talked to Jack since she’d frantically called him to see if she could borrow both his Gulfstream and his pilot to rush her to Pittsburgh the minute she’d gotten the news of her mother’s heart attack. Kate’s mother was only sixty-seven. Peter had offered to buy her a house anywhere she wanted, near her grandchildren or in the Sun Belt, but she’d chosen to stay near her friends in Pittsburgh. They bowled. They played canasta. They drank sherry after dinner in spite of their doctors’ warnings.
    Jack Carpenter had accompanied Kate on the flight, but they’d gotten there too late.
    Sarah finally found her parents. She reached out her hands to them. Kate stroked the top of her daughter’s hair. The principal, a tall, angular man with wireless glasses who’d been walking with Sarah said he wanted a picture of his exceptionally talented first cellist and her parents. Peter stood to Sarah’s left, Kate to her right.
    It took no more than a few seconds to pose for the picture, but the silence of the time they were frozen in their smiles caused Kate to wonder whether there was anything to what Peter and Karl had been talking about. Had her conversation with Jack started any differently from the