“Sounds rough,” Cynthia said.

“Are you from New York originally?” Victoria said.

Cynthia, who had turned around to make sure the children hadn’t fallen too far behind, or maybe been snatched by silent ninja domestics, said, “What? No. Near Chicago.”

“And what line is your family in?”

Cynthia repeated the question in her head to be sure she had heard it right. “They’re small-town contractors,” she said.

That she had put her foot in her mouth seemed more plausible to Victoria than the idea of being openly mocked; embarrassed, she looked away, and in avoiding Cynthia’s eyes she seemed to remind herself of the presence of the two children, who, though of course they could have cared less about paint shades and window treatments, were awestruck by the house itself, the scale and gadgetry of it. There were environmental-control panels in every room, touch screens that not only calibrated light and temperature and music but also gave you access to security-camera views of the garage, the grounds, the driveway, and even the other rooms inside the house. It had taken Jonas about ten seconds to figure it out. “There’s Dad!” he said. Cynthia kept throwing him doomsday looks over her shoulder, but having solved the puzzle of the touch screens he couldn’t keep his hands off them, and anyway she was half rooting for him to figure out how to make it rain in there. Soon he had left a trail of images of his father and Sanford flickering in every empty room through which they passed.

Victoria hadn’t noticed that, but she picked up on the kids’ general enchantment and felt gratified again. April was walking a few steps ahead of her brother now, embarrassed by his youthful enthusiasm, trying to blend in with the women, mimicking their facial expressions like someone trying to sneak into the second act of a play. She loved it when new people thought she was older than she was. She was leaning toward Victoria like some kind of thirsty plant, but Victoria seemed disinclined to engage her too directly. “God, these are gorgeous children,” she said to Cynthia. “How old did you say they were?”

“Seven and six,” Cynthia said, ignoring a scowl from April, who felt ages should be rounded up.

“They could model. They look like a Ralph Lauren catalogue. They go to school?”

“Why, yes,” Cynthia said. “We thought that would be wise.”

“Where, though?”

“ Dalton,” April offered.

“Very nice,” Victoria said. “And you were smart to have them so young. Easier to bounce back.” And she reached out and casually patted Cynthia just below her waistline, approvingly, a touch so condescendingly intimate that Cynthia was speechless. She tried to remind herself that this was the wife of her husband’s boss and so she would just have to suck it up for the weekend, and when that didn’t work she tried to drum up some sympathetic revulsion at the thought of what old Vicky here must have had to deliver sexually in exchange for this life of high-end vision realizing. But that didn’t really work either, because Sanford, even in his late sixties or whatever he was, was a ridiculously handsome guy.

It was apparently his intent to sit there on the porch drinking Bloody Marys for the duration of his guests’ stay. He was talking now about the upcoming Newport-to-Bermuda yacht race. The Bloody Marys were excellent; Adam was starting to recall the pleasures of getting drunk before lunchtime but this seemed like an odd setting for it, like a myth or a fairy tale in which he might drink the proscribed drink and never find his way back to the surface of the earth. Not that he was nervous around the boss-they’d been drunk together many times-or felt he needed to keep up appearances of any sort. On the contrary: the more he was himself, the more the old man seemed to like him.

He looked abruptly at Adam, struck by an idea. “You could crew,” he said. “The crew I had last year was hopeless. Interested? We’d be out anywhere from four to six days.”

“Sadly,” Adam said, “I know fuck all about sailing.” Sanford ’s disappointment lasted only an instant. “You could pick it up,” he said. “I know a sailor when I see one. I see great things in you, you know.”

Adam pretended he hadn’t heard, which was his nearest approach to modesty.

“Those others, they’ll do fine,” Sanford went on. “But they’re lieutenants. You give them a job to do and they’ll get it done-any business needs that. But I see bigger things for you. God knows I won’t be around forever.”

Rather than allow Sanford to stray any farther down this path, Adam said, “So I’m meeting your pal Guy in Milwaukee on Monday morning. I have to fly out there tomorrow night.” “Your pal” was said with some levity; Sanford scowled at the mention of Guy’s name.

“The man is an animal,” he said. “I think there’s money to be made there, but I’m not sure I can spend another hour in the same room with him. Last time we met he threw a pen at my head. I’m sorry to sacrifice you to this lunatic. Maybe you can get it done, though. People like you. You know that? That’s a gift. You can’t teach it. I’m hungry,” he said suddenly.

“Can I ask you something? Is there a pool here?”

“Good Lord,” Sanford said, “you and the swimming.”

“No,” Adam said, “I was thinking of the kids. They brought their suits. Throw them in the water and they’re good all day. It might give them something to do while we’re sitting here getting loaded.”

Sanford folded his hands on his chest. He had sunk quite low in his chair. “Helicopter,” he said. “That’s the term, right? These days? Helicopter parents, helicopter parenting.”

“Sorry?”

“You’re close to them, aren’t you? I think that’s great.”

“You have children yourself, sir?”

The old man loved to be called sir. “Oh God yes,” he said. “Of course. Anyway, no, there’s no swimming pool here, but we do belong to this little club in town where they can swim all they like. Maybe we can even get some goddamn lunch there, since no lunch appears to be forthcoming here.”

They followed the Sanfords in their car, in a silence generated by the fear that anything they wanted to say might later be innocently repeated in front of their hosts by one of the kids. It also required all of Adam’s concentration not to lose sight of Sanford ’s Boxster, which he drove through the narrow roads at aristocratic speed. Adam thought the word “club” betokened a simple swimming pool, and had told the kids so; the family made a collective gasping sound when they came instead upon a clean, still lake hidden improbably high up in the Berkshire foothills. A wooden sign at the gate told them the place was called Cream Hill Pond. The quiet was overwhelming: “No power boats,” Sanford pointed out. “Sunfish city.” White sails dotted the water. There were two tennis courts, but no one was on them. The kids were vibrating with impatience to get into the lake; Cynthia asked Sanford ’s wife where the changing rooms were, but Victoria, who looked unhappy and even somewhat baffled to be there at what seemed like the children’s behest, didn’t know and had to ask someone else.

The dark pines, the sun on the water, the shimmer of the triangular sails, it was all so postcard-beautiful that you felt a little stupid giving in to it; but April’s and Jonas’s uncomplicated pleasure was infectious. Cynthia watched them organizing some game in the water with a group of kids they’d met five minutes ago. Rarely did you see the two of them get along so well for so long a stretch and you had to think that the relationship between that and the sheer sense of space out here wasn’t coincidental. She lifted her head to admire the green bowl of the hills. Wide open yet secure. Maybe she’d been looking at this place, this life, through the wrong eyes. All you wanted was for your children to become their best selves, but how were you supposed to know if this was not happening? Victoria was right: they were beautiful, so beautiful you almost felt like you should apologize for it, like something fundamental had been rigged in their favor. Maybe you were denying them something they needed without even knowing it, just because you weren’t thinking big enough, or far enough outside the box of what your own childhood was like.