“Do it,” said Daisy, “or I’ll get a TikTok.”
Beatrice didn’t move.
“Okay, how about this? Come downstairs, say hello to three people, get something to eat, let your father see you, and then you can come back and hide.”
“Whatever,” Beatrice grumbled, but it got her off the bed.
Downstairs, Daisy replenished the tray of deviled eggs （an old-school, dowdy kind of party food, but like the pigs in a blanket, they always got eaten）。 She picked up a platter and did a quick round, collecting empty cups and discarded plates and crumpled paper napkins, pausing to touch the leaves of her poor schefflera, pushed into a corner of the terra-cotta-floored sunroom along with another half-dozen houseplants because Hal didn’t want the place looking like a jungle.
She told the musicians to take a break and brought them glasses of water and lemonade, plus a plate of desserts she’d set aside. That task completed, she checked the time, refilled her drink, and stood in the corner, watching women in six-hundred-dollar shoes and men in thousand-dollar suits talk about which thirty-thousand-dollar summer camp their kids would be attending for the critical summer before junior year.
When she noticed the punch bowl getting low again, she went back to the kitchen. She saw the piles of plates by the sink, the empty crates in which the glasses had arrived stacked in the corner, and Mireille standing with her back against the oven, with Hal in front of her, just inches away. For a moment, Daisy wasn’t sure what she’d interrupted. A proposition? A kiss? Then she saw Mireille wasn’t just standing, she was cringing; that Hal was too close, his posture menacing.
Daisy hurried closer, in time to see Mireille shake her head. “Non—I mean, no, Mr. Shoemaker, I promise, I didn’t let anyone into your office.”
“Well, then we have a problem,” Hal said, biting off each syllable. “I have—or, I should say that I had, five hundred dollars in cash in my desk drawer, and it seems to have grown legs and wandered off.”
“Hal.” When she touched his back he turned around with such an angry look on his face that Daisy stumbled backward, hitting the counter with the small of her back. Oh, that’s going to leave a mark, she thought. Immediately, Hal’s hands were on her shoulders, and he was the one steadying her, pulling her upright.
“Honey, are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she said, ignoring her throbbing back. “I was in your office. I took the money out of the drawer and brought it upstairs. The kids left their instrument cases in there, and I just thought it’d all be safer somewhere else.”
For what felt like a long time, Hal said nothing. His face was pale; his hands were fisted; he looked like a man who wanted to hit someone, and Daisy smelled something so incongruous that at first she didn’t recognize it. Scotch, she realized. For the first time since she’d met him, Hal had been drinking. She could feel his anger, could almost see it, like something tightly leashed that was a few frayed strands from breaking free and doing terrible things. Then he relaxed, and she could glimpse her husband again, her kind, thoughtful Hal, who swore he’d remembered her as a girl, who’d left a credit card on her pillow the morning after he’d proposed and said I want to be your family.
“Mireille,” he said, his voice formal. “I owe you an apology.”
“Ce n’est rien,” Mireille said faintly.
“No, it’s not nothing.” He reached into his wallet, and pulled out a bill large enough to make Mireille’s eyes widen, and pressed it into her hand. “I’m very sorry.”
“It’s fine,” said Mireille. She gave him a weak smile and went back to the sink, where she was washing wineglasses by hand. When Daisy joined her, holding a dish towel, Mireille bent forward, a sheaf of her hair obscuring her face, and repeated what she’d said to Daisy’s husband. “It’s fine.”
* * *
Later, when the party was over, the dishes washed, the punch bowl packed up, and Daisy’s plants and potted palms restored to their previous positions, she said, “What’s going on?”
“What do you mean?” Hal asked, as if there could be any doubt about what she meant.
“What happened with Mireille?”
“Oh,” Hal said, without meeting her eyes. “I guess I overreacted.” His hair was tousled, and he was wearing pajamas, the top buttoned and the bottoms ironed. Daisy watched as he stood in front of the bathroom mirror, flossing his teeth. Hal always wore pajamas to bed, he always used the bathroom sink closest to the door, and he always flossed before bedtime. A creature of routine was her husband, which made her wonder what he was like before she met him, if his life had been as messy and chaotic then as it was tidy and regulated now.