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Dodge Caravan while Lisa proceeded straight ahead to where the man from the dealership had told her he'd parked the Jaguar. "See ya tomorrow."
    "Enjoy your concert."
    Fifteen minutes later, Lisa had left the small but vibrant city that was Lexington behind. Once across the old two-lane bridge that arched over the Kentucky River, a sleepy expanse of muddy green water that was a favorite of local fishermen, she was in Woodford County. The leafy back roads that led to Grayson Springs were narrow and winding, distinguished by a series of picturesque bridges that arched over meandering streams and lined with mortarless stone walls that had been constructed by itinerant Irish masons some two hundred years before. Farms, small and large, dotted the landscape, ranging in type from the hardscrabble six-chickens-and-a-cow ones that could no longer eke out a living for their owners to the mansions and climate-controlled stables and vast acreage of the premier Thoroughbred operations, of which Grayson Springs had once been a crown jewel. On all sides, lush fields of Kentucky's fabled bluegrass rolled away for as far as the eye could see. As Lisa had several times had to explain to disappointed friends visiting from college, the bluegrass wasn't really blue. It was as green as the grass anywhere, except on certain days when the wind blew in the right direction and the light was just right and . . . well, suffice it to say that ninety-nine percent of the time, the bluegrass was green. But whatever color it was, it was absolutely ideal for raising the best racehorses in the world, and for generations now that was the use to which it had been put.
    This place was, Lisa had often thought, one of the last refuges of aristocracy in America. People here knew one another's lineage, and who you were mattered. If you weren't the son or daughter of one of the upper-crust families, then you were to all intents and purposes invisible, just a worker bee toiling in the hive of ordinary life. Some of the wealthiest people in the world lived here, or had second homes here, or visited often. The Queen of England spent a nearly annual vacation at Lane's End, another of the top-flight Thoroughbred farms, whose owners were among Her Majesty's closest friends. The rulers of Saudi Arabia were regulars at the local horse sales, and they snapped up prime breeding stock for prices that brought smiles to the faces of the consignors. Hollywood icons, famous European fashion designers, and billionaire businessmen alike lived in quiet splendor on vast properties that no one outside this little enclosed world knew they owned. So many top-of-the-line private jets flew in to Blue Grass Airport that its commercial operations were secondary to its real function, which was catering to the elite. Lexington's fabled Keeneland Race Course catered to the moneyed few and was far too swanky to allow itself to be referred to as Keeneland Race Track.
    It was beautiful, anachronistic, and home sweet home. She'd been back for only eight months, and she was ready to swear she could feel her bred-in-the-bone southern gentility rising in her veins like sap.
    Sometimes she longed for Boston like she longed for a cool breeze in the midst of all this cloying heat. One day, when everything here was settled, she meant to go back and pick up the pieces of the life she had made for herself there.
    Lisa was jolted back to the present by the sounds of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony emanating from her purse. It was her ringtone, and as she fished her cell phone out she saw that the caller was Joel. A junior partner in his wealthy father's real estate development company, he'd flown with his father to Chicago, where they had business that would occupy them overnight, after dropping her off at work.
    "Just calling to check in," he said when she answered, and she guessed that he had only just arrived. Bronzed, blond, and handsome enough to star in a Ralph Lauren ad, Joel was another offspring of the