Sitar music played in the background, which was Thai enough for the suburbs, and the coveted tables were filled. The other diners were well-dressed middle-aged couples, and Christine was glad she’d dressed up. She’d showered after gardening because she was ridiculously sweaty and she’d even blown her hair out completely, applying Moroccan oil to give it some shine. She had on her nicest summer dress, of lime-green silk, and for once she was glad she wasn’t into maternity clothes. She hadn’t dressed to impress Marcus or his father, though Frederik Nilsson was the type of man that women tended to dress up for. She was dressing for herself, to improve her mood and put the day behind her.

She looked up when the restaurant doors opened, her attention drawn by a flash of bright sunlight. In the doorway she spotted Marcus’s silhouette, followed by an almost-identical silhouette of her father-in-law Frederik, with his wife Stephanie. Christine smiled and gave a pleasant wave, and Marcus waved back. He walked toward the table, though his father and Stephanie lagged behind, greeting the restaurant owner, who came out to shake Frederik’s hand.

Frederik Nilsson was a star architect, or “starchitect,” who lived in Avon and owned his own architecture firm in Hartford, Nilsson International, which he had started by designing modern glass homes for the wealthy residents of Greenwich and Darien. After one of his houses appeared in Architectural Digest, his client base expanded to national proportions, though Christine thought his glass shoeboxes reminded her of a fourth-grader’s diorama. Frederik touted his “design aesthetic” as his “Scandinavian architectural voice,” but to her, it was cookie-cutter for a five-million-dollar cookie.

Christine truly didn’t begrudge her father-in-law his success, though she wished he wore it with more grace, for Marcus’s sake. Frederik always acted as if architects were true artists, while architectural engineers were boring number-crunchers. Frederik gave lip service that engineering was equal to architecture, but Marcus knew his father was disappointed in him for choosing engineering over architecture. It came to a head five years ago, when Frederik had asked Marcus to join his architectural firm, to provide it with an adjunct engineering arm. Marcus had declined to move under his father’s thumb, which Frederik took personally, and the competition between father and son formed a constant undercurrent of tension.

“Hey, honey,” Marcus said, leaning over and giving her a quick peck on the cheek, and she realized that he hadn’t touched her in days.

“Hi, good to see you.”

“God, what a day.” Marcus sat down next to her but avoided eye contact, and Christine could feel him being gingerly around her, his feelings still hurt. They hadn’t spoken since Leonardo’s office, not even a text.

“Busy?”

“Totally, but it looks like North Carolina settled down.” Marcus loosened his tie. “Dad’s in a great mood.”

“Good,” Christine said in a way that she hoped sounded pleasant and not relieved. Frederik could be temperamental, and his moods tended to dictate the mood of the evening, if not because he enforced it but because everyone around him became accustomed to acquiescing.

Christine and Marcus looked up as Frederik and Stephanie had finished with the owner and were coming over, with Frederik making a great show of walking between the tables, smiling at the diners as if he knew them, wheeling his head of cool, longish ash-blond hair this way and that. The man had presence, projecting that he was the kind of man you should know, expensively dressed in a dark gray Italian suit tailored closely around his lean torso and waist, which he’d paired with a black silk shirt worn open at the collar, with no tie. His eyes were a fiercely intelligent light blue, sharp against his light tan, and he kept flashing a smile with aggressively large top teeth that Christine always thought of as Kennedyesque, but in a bad way.

“Christine, how’s our girl?” Frederik boomed, finally reaching the table, leaning over, and giving her a quick kiss on the cheek.

“Great, thanks. Happy Birthday!”

“Don’t remind me! Sixty-five is for speed limits, not men!”

Christine chuckled, then leaned over to smile at Stephanie, who, at about five-ten, was nevertheless hidden behind her husband. “Hi, Stephanie, great to see you!”

“You, too!” Stephanie said with a warm smile, sitting down at the table. Christine liked Stephanie, having gotten over the fact that she was the proverbial trophy wife, some twenty-five years younger than Frederik. The former Stephanie Wooten had caught Frederik’s eye when he started taking a Pilates class she taught, after he had injured his back. Stephanie was kind, thoughtful, and artsy but happy to let others take the spotlight, namely her husband.

“You look amazing!” Christine said, meaning it. Stephanie had worked as a catalog model in Europe and was beautiful in an exotic way, with almond-shaped brown eyes, and tonight, her long brown hair slicked back into a chic high ponytail. She wore almost no makeup except for lip-gloss, letting her ethereal beauty just be, like a Zen goddess. Delicate gold hoops hung from her ears, and she looked effortlessly elegant in a sheath of taupe jersey with a dramatic halter neckline, which hugged every inch of her ballet-lean body, all the way down to her flat, Roman sandals.

“How are you feeling?” Stephanie asked, smiling at her sweetly.

“Thanks, I’m fine except for the morning sickness,” Christine answered, compromising somewhere between the truth and completely fake small talk.

Frederik grinned his toothy grin. “What a great way to celebrate this birthday, with two beautiful women! Marcus tells me school’s over for you, Christine. What are you going to do with yourself until the baby comes?”

“Read without guilt?”

“Great idea, rest up for the baby!” Frederik grinned, then glanced over his shoulder. “Where’s that damn waiter? We need to get this celebration started! I ordered champagne!”

“He’ll be here soon, Dad,” Marcus said, looking for the waiter.

Frederik leaned on the table hard enough that the glasses tinkled. “I had a life-changing event this week. I was in a G V.”

“Wow!” Marcus said. “Cool. A G V?”

“What’s a G V?” Christine joked. “Is that like a Gee Whiz?”

Frederik chuckled. “It’s a jet. The G stands for Gulfstream, and the V is for the Roman numeral five. Thus, G V. It’s the new one, after the G IV. I’ve never seen anything quite like it.”