She switched on the radio on her nightstand and tuned it to WNYC. "I'll Never Smile Again" played softly. Peter stirred, still asleep. In the brilliant sunlight his porcelain skin was barely distinguishable from the white satin sheets. Once she thought all engineers were men with flat-top haircuts, thick black glasses, and lots of pencils in their shirt pockets. Peter was not like that-strong cheekbones, a sharp jawline, soft green eyes, nearly black hair. Lying in bed now, his upper body exposed, he looked, Margaret thought, like a tumbled Michelangelo. He stood out on the North Shore, stood out from the fair-haired boys who had been born to extraordinary wealth and planned to live life from a deck chair. Peter was sharp and ambitious and brisk. He could run circles around the whole crowd. Margaret liked that.

She glanced at the hazy sky and frowned. Peter detested August weather like this. He would be irritable and cranky all day. There would probably be a thunderstorm to ruin the drive back into the city.

She thought, Perhaps I should wait to tell him the news.

"Get up, Peter, or we'll never hear the end of it," Margaret said, poking him with her toe.

"Five more minutes."

"We don't have five minutes, darling."

Peter didn't move. "Coffee," he pleaded.

The maids had left coffee outside the bedroom door. It was a practice Dorothy Lauterbach loathed; she thought it made the upstairs hallway look like the Plaza Hotel. But it was allowed if it meant that the children would abide by her single rule on weekends-that they come downstairs for breakfast promptly at nine o'clock.

Margaret poured a cup of coffee and handed it to him.

Peter rolled onto his elbow and drank some. Then he sat up in bed and looked at Margaret. "How do you manage to look so beautiful two minutes after getting out of bed?"

Margaret was relieved. "You're certainly in a good mood. I was afraid you'd have a hangover and be perfectly beastly all day."