“I’m nervous,” said Meg Becker in a stressed, quiet voice. Sitting on the edge of the king-sized bed in the hotel room overlooking Columbus Circle, she felt strange staying at a hotel in the city where she’d grown up.
Meg moved uneasily toward the window, pausing as her reflection overcame the view. Her blond hair skimming her shoulders, her slim frame hugged by a cashmere V-neck sweater and black pencil skirt. Elegant, symmetrical features had always greeted her—wide blue eyes, sharp cheekbones, sensual but refined lips. But today, her outer composure belied her feelings. Inside, she was a scattered jigsaw puzzle.
“What are you worried about?” Stowe, her fiancé—fiancé! She still wasn’t used to the word—glanced up at her from his laptop.
“Your mother. My mother. My grandmother,” she said, sitting down on the bed again heavily.
“You’re never nervous,” Stowe said as he slid closer to her, taking her hand. Kissing her neck, he sent a shiver of delight through her body. “And there’s no reason to start now, sweetheart.”
“Untrue! I was nervous the day we met,” she said, smiling. Think about the beginning, she told herself. Focus on being in love. Forget about dinner!
“That’s right. You were. But then, you were going on live television for the first time.” He gave her a wry smile in return. “So I think we can let that one slide.”
She first saw him in the green room at the show Real Time with Bill Maher. Meg, a senior editor at Poliglot, a political Web site, had gained notoriety with an article on Elizabeth Warren calling out ABA lobbyists on the Senate floor and had been invited on the show as a panelist. The other two panelists were in the room, a loud, liberal actor with a new movie out and a chip on his shoulder, and Reed Campion, a rising star in Republican politics and a Pennsylvania senator. Campion and the actor chatted each other up while Meg was left to anxiously check her e-mails and mentally replay her talking points. She was the first person from Poliglot invited on such a high-profile show, and her bosses had warned her not to fuck it up—in pretty much those exact terms.
And that’s when Stowe, a member of Campion’s entourage, approached her. If she hadn’t been so nervous about the show, she would have been cowed by his staggering good looks. But as it was, she was just relieved to have someone keeping her mind occupied before it was time to go on live television.
It wasn’t until the show was over, until after he had already asked her out for a drink, that she learned he was the senator’s son.
They were both strangers to L.A., and this, at least, put them on equal footing. Unsure of where to go, they took a recommendation from someone on Bill Maher’s staff and ended up at the Standard Hotel on Sunset.
They sat out by the pool, under the stars. Meg’s first thought was that her sister Jo would fit right in, with her long hair and peasant blouses, her denim shorts and ever-present flip-flops. But Meg, with her ponytail and pearls and Chanel ballerina flats, was a fish out of water. Fortunately, Stowe—with his close shave and short dark hair, his fair skin that seemed like it had never seen a day at the beach, and his jacket and tie—was equally out of place. If anything, their contrast to the strange exotic birds of L.A. that surrounded them just made them seem all the more perfect for each other.
With the show behind her and her confidence back, Meg was finally able to notice that Stowe Campion was GQ-cover-model gorgeous. And smart. And ambitious.
And how hyperaware she was of his thigh next to hers.
“How did you manage to take time off to come out here?” she asked, smiling playfully. “Don’t they keep you guys chained to your desk until you’re in your fifties, at least?” At thirty, he was the youngest partner at the D.C. law firm Colby, Quills, McGinty, and Dean.
“The gods of timing were on my side,” he said, leaning closer to her. “We’re taking depositions out here on Monday. I was able to swing an extra day or two.”
“Timing is everything in life. So they say.” Meg swallowed hard. She had never wanted a guy more. Her desire unnerved her. She had been so focused on work the past year and half that she’d barely even dated.
Finally, when it was nearing one in the morning, she reluctantly stood to leave. She could have sat there talking to him all night, but the control freak in her needed to be the one to punctuate the evening.
“So.” They locked eyes, and her stomach fluttered.
She was staying at a hotel on Santa Monica, and he was staying at a family friend’s house in Beverly Hills—with his father. Clearly, if they were going to take their little party elsewhere, it would have to be to her place. But she couldn’t bring herself to invite him. Meg Becker did not make the first move. Ever. Plus, if she was going to sleep with someone on the first date, it would at least have to be an actual date.
And yet she regretted her unflinching stance when, two weeks later, she still had not heard from him—despite the fact that he’d tapped her number into his phone before walking her to her car.
Back in D.C., Meg suddenly became overly interested in the work of the senator from Pennsylvania. She sat in on a few less-than-newsworthy votes on the Senate floor, justifying it to herself—and to her boss, Kevin—that he was an up-and-comer, a politician worth watching closely.
But she never managed to see Stowe, try as she might—though Meg would never, ever, admit to trying to run into him.
And then she got annoyed. Why hadn’t he called? Just like that, her interest in Reed Campion’s senate voting activity disappeared entirely. But one afternoon, while she was running up the steps to the carriage entrance of the Capitol to record a quick interview with the senator from South Carolina, Stowe was walking out.
He noticed her first. “Meg Becker,” he called happily.
Before she turned, she knew on some subconscious level, some animalistic part of her soul that was already half in love with him, that it was Stowe.
She pretended not to remember his name.
Stowe held out his phone, displaying her name and number in his contacts, and gave an apologetic smile. “I was premature in saying they don’t keep me chained to my desk,” he said. “But I’ve escaped for the day. Is there any chance in hell that you’re free for dinner tonight?”
And that, as they say, was that. Deep down, in her heart of hearts, Meg knew she was done—off the market. One year later, he put a ring on her finger. And it was official.
And now, they were mere hours away from their parents meeting for the first time. Well, his mother and her parents anyway. As soon as people got wind of Reed’s calendar putting him in New York that weekend, his office started getting calls. Meg understood; after a year with Stowe, she knew that Reed—traveling constantly from their home in Haverford, Pennsylvania, to his office in the capital, Harrisburg, to D.C. for meetings and votes on the Senate floor—was difficult to pin down, family occasion or not. But her mother would never understand. She would consider this yet another example of the Campions “not making an effort.”
About six months into her relationship, Meg let it slip that the Campions were in New York for the weekend. Big mistake; Meryl thought for sure they would reach out and suggest coffee or a drink with the parents of their son’s girlfriend. They didn’t. Eventually, Meryl decided to just suck it up and do the reaching out herself. Phone tag ensued, and the end result was that the two mothers never actually spoke until the day after the engagement, when Tippy called Meryl to say she was “so delighted” for “the kids” and that they would be in New York soon to take them to dinner.
But Meryl didn’t want to be “taken” to dinner. She wanted to host dinner at the apartment, so they could all get to know one another. “After all,” she’d said to Meg, “We’re going to be family.”
Meg didn’t have the heart to tell her mother they would never really be family—not in the way her mother envisioned. The Campions were a closed circle, and they had their own way of doing things. More was not merrier. The Campions were more like a club than a family, and they were certainly not looking for new members.
Patricia “Tippy” Gaffney Campion was a Main Line blue blood who had been born, bred, and educated in the rarefied air of the Philadelphia suburbs—the Baldwin Academy and then Bryn Mawr. She’d raised her three boys in a sprawling stone home in the woods of Villanova. They summered at “the shore” and at the country club, Philadelphia Racquet and Hunt. Meg, having grown up in Manhattan and attended one of its more exclusive private schools (albeit on a free ride since her father was on staff), was no stranger to elitism. But she had never encountered anything quite like the sheer myopia of Tippy Campion. Nothing, absolutely nothing, outside her sphere of interest and influence mattered.
Meg was already dreading the land mine that would be Thanksgiving and Christmas every year, when she would be forced to alternate between being with her parents and Stowe’s. There was a chance the Campions would invite her parents to family events, but she knew that Meryl liked “having the girls at home.” Meg liked it too.
And what about Amy and Jo? They wouldn’t want to travel to Philly to have holidays at the Campion house.
She rose again to look out the window. This was just part of merging your life with another person’s. These things would work themselves out. I just have to get through tonight.
“My mother is going to talk to your mom about the wedding planner,” said Stowe, coming up behind her, his arms circling her waist.
Meg turned, and mistaking the expression of surprise on her face for happiness, he kissed her.
“Stowe, I told you my parents aren’t wedding-planner-type people,” Meg said. “Mom won’t want a stranger getting involved and second-guessing her. My mother wants to just run with this—she’s so excited about it. It would break her heart not to do it herself. And frankly, I’d rather just plan it with my mom.”
“Hon, of course you’ll be planning it with your mom. The wedding planner will just help with some of the logistics that would bog you guys down, like dealing with all the vendors. She’ll make sure everything is efficient, easy.”
Meg pulled away from him, crossing her arms in front of her chest and frowning. This was a vote of no confidence from Tippy. Not for her mother, but for her. The wedding-planner issue was a reminder of the one thing Meg didn’t want to think about this weekend: her certainty that Tippy did not approve of her.
Meg Becker was never disliked. Meg was the one people aspired to be around, to be like, and to be liked by. She was occasionally intimidating, but just until you got to know her; she was a girl’s girl—a loyal friend, a straight shooter at work, the voice of reason among her squabbling sisters. She never stole someone else’s boyfriend, took credit for work that wasn’t hers, or upstaged someone when it was their turn to speak. She was polite and well-informed, opinionated but not judgmental. She dressed stylishly but not flashily. She was ambitious but not cutthroat. She was beautiful, yes—but in an understated way. Jo was less classically beautiful, but when she walked into a room, every head turned. Meg could fly under the radar if need be.
But with Tippy …
“Stowe, I don’t want to worry about efficiency. Planning our wedding isn’t something I want to just check off my list like an article I have to write. In some ways, I’ve been looking forward to this my whole life.” Meg smiled, thinking of all those times she and her sisters had played “wedding” as little girls.
Stowe took her hands in his, drawing her closer. “That’s not what I meant, Meg. It’s just there’s a lot to do, we’re all busy—including your mom—and we are lucky to have a pro at our disposal. Why not use her?”
She didn’t want a pro. And yet, she found it difficult to say no. It was a new and undesirable side of herself that had somehow appeared to coincide with her relationship with Stowe: people pleaser. And this people-pleasing was undeniably specific to one person in particular: Tippy Campion.
* * *
Meryl unwrapped the triangular brick of Jarlsberg from its cellophane wrapper and removed the lid from the plastic container of mixed, pitted olives. No, she “didn’t even really cook.” But the table was set with beautiful dishes, the crystal candlesticks she and Hugh had brought back from a trip to Ireland, and Meg’s favorite tablecloth, the green and red bird toile print that Meryl had bought on Madison at a cute little shop that had long since been replaced by a Gucci or Alice + Olivia or someplace else she’d never set foot in. In the oven, Meryl was reheating bruschetta, and the house smelled like she’d been cooking all day. So there.
Hugh walked in, heavily dropping his books and messenger bag on the entrance table.
“Hugh, put that stuff in your office, please. They’ll be here soon. Oh, and my mother isn’t coming after all,” Meryl told him.
Hugh shrugged as if to say, What’s new?
He seemed quiet, distracted. Usually, when he was stressed out, it was because he was grading subpar exams, failures that he took personally. But it was only October—too early for end-of-the-semester nerves. Maybe he’d hit yet another “wall” in writing his book. But it was doubtful after all this time that he was letting his ever-stalled project get to him. So it must be Meg’s engagement.
She had to admit there was something both thrilling and unnerving about Meg marrying into such extreme wealth—that money would never be an issue for her. It was something Meryl could barely imagine. And Amy seemed headed on the same track with Andy. Only her youngest daughter, Jo, seemed to be living a normal existence for a twenty-something, working at a Brooklyn coffee shop and dating an equally cash-strapped law student.
Meryl tried to imagine the early years of her marriage, only without worrying about money. While Meryl and Hugh had never been impoverished, there had been many months in the early days when they lived on cereal and missed payments on the electric bill. Not that they cared; they were just happy to be together. But since the Yardley job, they managed to live extremely well within their means. The girls had attended Yardley for free. Meg earned an academic scholarship to Georgetown, and Jo had gotten a partial scholarship to NYU. They paid full tuition only for Amy’s four years at Syracuse. They had been renting the same summer house for two weeks in August on Fire Island since Meg was a toddler—and the fee somehow barely went up. And, of course, the one thing that made their life in Manhattan infinitely more livable than those of a lot of their friends: the beautiful, three-bedroom, prewar apartment with a view of the river that Yardley provided them for a fraction of the market value.
They had been lucky. But their daughters were about to become even luckier. So it surprised her when Hugh said that he liked both Stowe and Andy, “despite the money.”
“Despite the money?” Meryl said. “Doesn’t every parent dream of their kid marrying rich?”
“No,” Hugh said, frowning at her. “They dream of their children being happy.”
“Yes, well, you have to admit, money helps in that regard.”
But in saying that, she felt like she was betraying some core value they had once shared—a pact they had made to live a life in the pursuit of art and culture. Certainly Hugh, a high school English teacher, and Meryl, with a career in book publishing, were not motivated by making a fortune. A fact that made the extravagant wealth of their daughters’ partners all the more curious.
And though she hated to admit it, her life with Hugh suddenly seemed provincial, as if they’d raised their girls on a farm. At least, she was afraid that’s how it seemed to the Campions.
Maybe Hugh sensed that attitude as well, because he certainly didn’t seem to share her excitement about the engagement.
“Can you at least pretend to be looking forward to dinner tonight? Between you and my mother, I feel like I’m in this thing alone.”
“I’m sorry. I’m preoccupied.”
She wanted to tell him to snap out of it, but he looked so defeated. So she put her hand his arm and softly asked, “What’s going on?”
“It’s just work stuff,” he said, shaking her off.
Then she remembered: the call earlier in the day when she’d been running to her mother’s. Janell South.
Janell South was a senior who had come to Yardley two years earlier, a scholarship student. There weren’t many of them at Yardley, but the ones who made it there and lasted tended to be exceptional. She had grown up in the Bronx, shuttled between foster homes, before recently settling with her adult half sister in Harlem. According to Hugh, she was a talented writer who shared his passion for the American classics.
“What’s the problem?”
“Janell handed in a plagiarized paper,” Hugh said.
“Oh, Hugh—are you absolutely certain?”
“I recognized entire passages from McKnight’s book on Hawthorne.”
“I’m sorry! I know this is a huge disappointment. Will they let her finish out the semester?”
Yardley had a zero-tolerance policy toward cheating, a hard-and-fast rule that was enacted in the wake of massive cheating scandals at Stuveysant High School and Horace Mann. Hugh sat on the advisory board that had passed the measure.
“I’m sure they wouldn’t.”
“You mean, won’t.”
“No, I mean if I had reported it, they would expel her immediately.”
Meryl’s eyes grew wide. Just last year, Hugh had overseen the dismissal of Todd Boswick, a junior who cheated on the Regents Exam.
“You didn’t report her? Hugh, you can’t be serious. You can’t just take it upon yourself to make exceptions to the rules. That’s why you and the board voted for zero tolerance—to take the guessing and favoritism out of it.”
“This is different.”
Todd Boswick, son of a hedge fund billionaire, was barely passing his classes. He skipped class, routinely got busted for having his cell phone or other contraband, and he talked back to teachers. Todd was a kid who thought the rules didn’t apply to him. And sadly, in the grand scheme of things, they didn’t. Because of his father’s wealth and stature, he was already ensconced at a neighboring private school.
But there would be no such safety net for Janell South.
“Hugh, I understand why you feel that way and that you feel bad. But it’s not your job to cover for her. You have to report this or you’re as much at fault as she is.”
“Well, it’s too late for that. I told her I was giving her a warning.”
Meryl looked at him in shock. “Hugh! You helped put that code of ethics in place, and now you’re just ignoring it?”
“Don’t Monday-morning-quarterback me, Meryl,” he responded angrily. “I was agonizing over this all day, and you couldn’t be bothered to talk for five minutes. And I couldn’t just wait to deal with it. So I did what I thought was right.”
It was then that Meryl realized this was about more than just Janell South. Hugh was pissed. He was pissed that their daughter was marrying into a family that expected a lavish wedding. He was pissed that Meryl was on board with that idea even if it meant straining them financially. And yes, he was pissed that a rule put in place to keep spoiled rich kids in line had bitten his pet student—a poor student—in the ass.
“Fine. You did what you thought was right. In that case, don’t hide in here, ‘agonizing over it’ when we have a family dinner tonight. Please, just forget about this for now. Enjoy tonight.” She looked at him imploringly. “For Meg.”
After a moment, he sighed, his shoulders relaxing. “You’re right.”
“We have a wedding to plan.” She smiled, hoping to make the school stuff recede, to bring him into a joyful moment.
“Make sure to keep the spending under control, okay? Within reason.”
“I will.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
He kissed her, and as if on cue, the doorbell rang.
“That’s them!” she said, her voice shrill, her heart leaping.
“Meryl, relax. It’s just dinner.”