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handsome, Oliver had always been the most like his mother, interested in art and music, bored with sports and banking, mild-mannered and dreamy. Helen and Worth had not been surprised when, at sixteen, Oliver announced that he was gay. Back then, Worth was still trying to groom Oliver to take over the bank, but Oliver combined his father’s facility for numbers with his mother’s love of art and became an architect. Now, at twenty-eight, he was living and working in San Francisco with his partner, Owen. Oliver and Owen were planning a commitment ceremony this year.
    Their third child, Teddy, was the real problem. He was becoming—could she actually say it?—a drug addict and alcoholic. Harsh words. Painful, frightening words. She wasn’t sure they were accurate. Teddy had always been moody, volatile, and, she had to admit it, spoiled. Possessed of the same charismatic good looks all her children had—the shining maple sugar hair, the sapphire eyes rimmed with thick dark lashes—Teddy was the baby of the family. If Helen had spoiled him, so had everyone else. Helen had often wondered just how much difference it made that Herb, Teddy’s grandfather and the stern commanding patriarch of the Wheelwrights, had died during Teddy’s teenage years. She’d always believed that Herb might have talked some sense into Teddy. She and Worth had not managed to do that, no matter how hard they’d tried.
    Since they couldn’t change Teddy, somehow they had, withoutconscious agreement, changed themselves. Changed their standards. Teddy hadn’t been subjected to the tongue lashings and groundings they’d imposed on the two older children. But Teddy was so sweet!
    As a child he was simply a mischievous elf, playing pranks. Somehow all that had blurred, until, when he was eleven, he’d sneaked out one night and driven Worth’s Mercedes around the neighborhood and into a wall. That time, they’d been so glad he wasn’t injured that they hadn’t gotten angry. And really it was hard to be angry with Teddy. He had an infectious laugh and a lightning-quick wit. He had the same easy charm Worth and Oliver had, too. He was kindhearted and gentle, never mean. At boarding school he got into trouble for all kinds of silliness, but he was always simply playful, roguish, not destructive, at least not on purpose.
    Worth thought it was his fault, the way Teddy had turned out. Worth had a sense of humor—Helen thought he’d gotten Grace’s share, as well—and especially with his family he indulged his flippant side. He loved pounding on the piano, and all through the years Worth had often entertained his family by spontaneously transforming their daily activities, successes and woes, into a musical comedy. He’d roll up his shirtsleeves, seat himself with a flourish at the baby grand, and bang out the theme from Sound of Music as if it had been written by Wagner. “Teddy wants a dog, but Mom’s allergic, Oliver has a cold, but Charlotte’s fine!” he’d bellow, or something just as silly.
    When the children were learning to sail, Worth had concocted elaborate pirate fantasies that lasted for days. He’d arrive at the island with a multitude of plastic “gem”-encrusted swords, ravage the trunks in Nona’s attics for dress-up clothes, and charm Nona into turning her old hats and scarves into tricornes and black eye patches. Grace had always scoffed at her brother’s foolishness, but her daughters followed Worth into his games with stars in their eyes.
    Worth had taught his children to ski, to play tennis, and to sail. During blizzards, he’d spend hours playing board games with them, and if it rained for several days during the summer, he’d invent an indoor scavenger hunt that involved the entire family, Grace and Kelloggand their daughters and Nona, too. He worked hard, and he played just as hard.
    How had that love of fun been transmuted into an addiction to drugs and alcohol for their third child?
    A year ago, Teddy had