44 Charles Street

“Got it.” He was thirty-eight years old and not allowed to have a girl in his room. But Chris knew his way around the system. They made her family look like wild libertines. And this was Boston. Old Boston. Old Guard.

Half an hour later, the house had gone quiet, and Chris tiptoed back in, barefoot in jeans. “All set.” He had his toothbrush with him. All he had to do was escape back to his own room in the morning by seven, when his mother came down to breakfast, religiously, every morning. She ran a tight ship. And kept a close eye on what went on in her house, just as she did at the Vineyard. Nothing escaped her eagle eye.

“She’s very old-fashioned,” he explained. He hadn’t mentioned it before, and hadn’t wanted to frighten Francesca. And as she thought about it, Francesca couldn’t even imagine the chaos Kimberly must have caused there when they were married, doing drugs and getting drunk. His parents must have loved that. And they would like even less what she’d been doing lately, recently out of jail, and absconding with their grandson. Chris said they hated her, and it was easy to see why. She just hoped they didn’t hate her too. Francesca was determined to respect them while she was there, even if their rules seemed silly to her.

They spent the night together in her room, and Chris set the alarm on his cell phone for quarter to seven. He bounded out of bed the moment it went off, kissed her, put on his jeans and shirt, and ran down the hall to his own room, where Ian was still sleeping. It was going to be an interesting weekend playing hide and seek in the hall, and musical bedrooms, to avoid his mother discovering them in the same room. He didn’t mind standing up to them on important issues, and always had, but he didn’t want to make waves now, and prejudice them against Francesca. If at all possible, he hoped they’d like her, and also relax their negative outlook on his living in her house. He wanted them to see what a good person she was, and how sweet to Ian.

Francesca almost expected Chris’s mother to do room inspections, and was afraid she would. She had brought them a bottle of wine and wondered if it was enough of a gift for a whole weekend. Maybe she should have sent them flowers instead. They were so proper, she was afraid to do the wrong thing. Nothing about them put her at ease. And his mother had been polite but not warm the night before.

Chris had breakfast with his mother, and then came back to find Francesca while she was getting dressed. She had breakfast in the dining room with assorted houseguests at eight-thirty and found herself sitting next to Chris’s sister Hilary, who was too busy taking care of her four-year-old twin boys to say more than hello. They were all going to church at ten, and Chris said it would be a good idea if she went. She had no objection, but clearly these people were used to doing everything together. It was a little like military school, or camp. And Chris was much more uptight here than he was in New York. All the men were supposed to play golf together that afternoon, but Chris said they wouldn’t if it snowed. And in summer they played football at the Vineyard. There were trophies for various athletic events all over the house. One of his cousins had won a gold medal in the Olympics. And his brother had been captain of the rowing team at Harvard. Francesca met him after breakfast, and he looked her over and said a cursory hello. He was four years older than Chris and planning to run for a congressional seat in the coming year. He introduced Francesca to his wife, and then they went upstairs to dress for church. They all seemed so different from Chris. They seemed like very competitive people to her. Tennis was a big deal to them, and football. All she knew anything about was art, not sports. She could barely contribute to the conversation at breakfast and hardly spoke. Chris could see how nervous she was when he found her afterward. She had worn black leather jeans and a black sweater. All the other women were wearing twin sets and plaid skirts, and none of them short. Francesca didn’t own a plaid skirt, of any length.