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was still early Sunday morning, the Caribbean sun bright and warm.
    â€œAll ready?” Max asked.
    â€œI think I’ve got everything,” Abby answered.
    They took a taxi to the small harbor town of Port Elizabeth, then a water taxi over to Mustique, where Abigail’s mother (more commonly known as Sylvia, Dowager Duchess of Northrop) was staying at a proper villa that was, at least partially, closer to her idea of an acceptable place to stay. Abigail’s newlywed brother, Devon, and his wife, Sarah James, were staying on in Bequia for their honeymoon, not returning to London for another two weeks, at the very least.
    Ten o’clock Sunday morning, the dowager duchess, along with Abigail, Max, Bronte, and Wolf, were all wedged into the relative luxury of Sylvia’s private jet. It was not her jet, per se, but the one-sixth time-share of a jet that she rarely made use of, except on occasions such as these that would require inconvenient plane changes on obscure third-world tarmacs. Abigail and her mother faced each other across the aisle in the first group of four seats and left Max, Bronte, and the baby to spread out in the four seats toward the rear of the very narrow fuselage.
    After what she was now ruefully telling herself was the Seduction-That-Wasn’t and a fitful few hours with her cheek burning a hole in the cool cotton pillowcase at her villa in Moonhole, Abigail fell easily asleep once the small plane reached cruising altitude. There wasn’t much to distract her, since her mother had very little to say to Max and even less to say to Bronte. Somewhere along the line, those three had fallen out of the habit of normal communication, though Wolf was turning out to be a happy bridge of sorts.
    Abigail, unlike her older brother, was beginning to see her mother as a separate adult, rather than the brisk, unloving matriarch of her childhood. She wasn’t sure if they would ever share a genuine affinity for one another, but in the meantime, Abby was grateful for the thaw. Lately, when she visited London, she often stayed at her mother’s (very large) townhouse in Mayfair, Northrop House. Abigail had assumed those visits would be few and uptight. As it turned out, her widowed mother was grateful for the company, and often made an effort to free up her schedule on the occasions that brought Abigail to town.
    Their interests were diametrically opposed (Sylvia’s grand passions included clothes, shoes, and interior decoration), but lately Abigail had the feeling that her mother was actually trying to cross the generational (or, more accurately, profound philosophical) divide that separated mother and daughter. Almost by accident, they had fallen into the habit of attending the BBC lunchtime concerts at Wigmore Hall on Mondays.
    Music was a passion they shared. Her mother was rarely moved by much of anything at all, a fact that Abby found almost frightening, especially because she herself seemed to feel everything around her with an unavoidable poignancy. But music seemed to affect the duchess. During concerts, Abigail had taken to stealing the occasional surreptitious glance at her mother: only then could she see a glimpse of a real woman, a real person, free of agendas and social constraints. Sylvia’s entire life had been a series of short- and long-term goals and, in due course, accomplishments. Lady Abigail, in one of her more deeply engrained—and perhaps self-defeating—acts of parental defiance, had always made a point of avoiding goals and accomplishments at every opportunity.
    Abigail awoke somewhere above the Atlantic Ocean, her neck bent at an uncomfortable angle. Her mother was quietly working on a piece of Bargello needlepoint that Abigail thought looked familiar, from twenty years ago.
    â€œHow long have you been working on that, Mother?”
    â€œI think I got the pattern when I was pregnant with you.”
    â€œWhy haven’t you ever finished it?”