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    “Just so you know,” I said quickly as Binky wheeled out a tray of salads, “I declined your mother’s offer to take a ride on P.J.’s sailboat after dinner.” Before Mike could register a complaint, I added, “You know they make me nervous.”
    “I do?” Mike looked confused.
    The ringing sound of the bell interrupted us.
    “Dinner is served,” Binky announced, and the whole happy family took a seat. I smirked when I noted that my place card had Mike seated directly across from me. I highly doubted Diana would have ordained this arrangement if she had any idea what my foot was reaching for surreptitiously under the table. Who likes a fast ride now, Mrs. King?
    “So, Mikie,” Phillip Jr. said, using the nickname I hated as he buttered a sweet potato biscuit. “Justin Balmer’s old lady came in for a consultation today.”
    Have I mentioned what an infamous bore Phillip Jr. usually was? But suddenly he had my undivided attention.
    “From the way she was talking,” he continued, “the bags under her eyes aren’t the only things sinking around Palmetto. How are your numbers in the projections for Prince? Is Mrs. Balmer full of hot air, or is J.B. actually going to give you a run?”
    Diana dropped her fork to her plate in alarm. Her eyes shot up at Mike.
    “Phillip’s joking, Mother,” Mike said, shrugging it off.
    “Not really,” Phillip quipped. He looked at his parents. “Remind me how many generations of Kings have been crowned at Palmetto? Four, or is it five?”
    “It’s every generation since the school has been in operation,” Phillip Sr. said, motioning Binky to clear his plate. He raised his steak knife in Mike’s direction so that it looked like an extension of his body. “This is not some little beauty pageant to be made light of, Michael. You know our family has a perfect record.”
    I’d always imagined that Mike was so nonchalant about Prince because it was the kind of thing his family might dismiss. But now I finally understood one of the many silent power struggles I waged with Diana: Every day after school, when I moved Mike’s framed National Merit Scholars certificate to the front of his desk, someone replaced it with his football trophy after I went home.
    So success was formulaic to the Kings. If adulthood was for serious, professional accomplishments . . . was it possible that high school, in their eyes, meant sports and popularity, to the point where they even trumped academics? So the Kings cared as much about Palmetto Court as I did. Suddenly, this little dinner party went from buzz kill to extremely beneficial.
    “Of course, who can forget Phillip Jr.’s flawless coronation speech?” Diana recalled, dotting her mouth with a napkin. “What was it again, dear? ‘As gratitude for this bestowed honor—’”
    “ ‘I will earn your absolute trust,’ ” Phillip Jr. finished, smugly nodding his head. I rolled my eyes at Mike to indicate that he would not be bringing that gem back to life at our coronation.
    Phillip Jr. lowered his voice and cocked his head away from his mother. “Of course, if you ask Isabelle, it wasn’t my verbal prowess she remembers about that day,” he muttered, giving Mike a nudge. “Don’t come a knockin’ when you see a carriage rockin’—know what I mean?”
    He and Mike shared a rare brotherly snicker at the reference to what went on behind closed carriage doors during the Prince and Princess’s famously racy ride to the coronation. It was one of Palmetto’s oldest traditions and also one of its most taboo. A half hour before the coronation ceremony, a horse-drawn carriage made two stops at the Scot’s Glen country club. First to pick up the Prince in the Club Room, then to pick up the Princess outside the Ladies Lounge. The nearly crowned then took a ride around all eighteen holes of the golf course and were delivered for their grand entrance to the ceremony, just in time to make their speeches.
    Depending on the