“Me,” Laurel said. “I’m sorry if you don’t like Clara’s room, but the guest room is big enough for two people, and I wanted to save it in case Scarlett and Ellery show up…”

“Scarlett?” Belinda said. “I thought…”

“She’s in Savannah,” Laurel said. “But Buck left word with her about this weekend, and I’m still holding out hope that she’ll come.”

Belinda was speechless. If she had known there was even the slightest chance that Scarlett Oliver would show up, she would have gone home to Kentucky.

“Clara’s bathroom has a tub,” Laurel said. “I thought you might like that.”

“Does the tub work?” Belinda asked.

“Honestly, I didn’t check,” Laurel said.

“Well, it didn’t work twelve years ago,” Belinda said. Instinctively, she pulled her phone out to check if there were any flights back to Boston tonight. From there, she would fly to Louisville and take Bob by surprise. But she had no cell signal. “Is there no cell service out here? Still?”

“My phone works at the end of the driveway,” Laurel said.

“It’s 2016!” Belinda said. “Coming back here is like a time warp.”

“Tell me about it,” Laurel said wryly.

“What about Buck’s phone?” Belinda asked. “Buck must be pissed.” She bit off this last word; Mrs. Greene did not tolerate vulgar language around the girls.

“He fell asleep in the front room,” Laurel said.

“Fell asleep?” Belinda said.

“Yes,” Laurel said. “He’s exhausted. Can I offer you some iced tea? Or a glass of wine?”

Belinda didn’t like the way Laurel was playing hostess. This wasn’t her house; it hadn’t been her house since the administration of George H. W. Bush. Furthermore, Belinda had been married to Deacon for fifteen years and with him for seventeen, whereas Laurel had been married to him for six years and with him for eleven. But Laurel had always enjoyed a certain sense of entitlement because she had been Deacon’s first wife and therefore-due to some calculus Belinda didn’t understand-knew him the best.

Belinda would never have agreed to come if she’d known Laurel was going to act like the lady of the manor.

“I’ll have wine,” Belinda said, though it was only quarter past twelve. Mrs. Greene was judgmental about the amount of alcohol that Belinda and Bob drank. Belinda imported cases of Les Monts Damnés from the Chavignol region of Sancerre, which she tucked away in the custom-made wine cave she’d had built in the root cellar. And Bob drank bourbon, obviously-they lived in Kentucky! Bob’s clients, the filthy-rich men who owned the Thoroughbreds, brought him bottle upon bottle of Pappy Van Winkle-ten-year, thirteen-year, twenty-three-year.

Mrs. Greene was slightly gentler in her disapproval of Bob’s drinking, probably because he was a man. If Belinda popped a cork before five, Mrs. Greene cleared her throat and eyed Belinda over the tops of her spectacles. Mrs. Greene was, quite naturally, a teetotaler.

“I have red or white,” Laurel said.

“White, please,” Belinda said, thinking, Please don’t let it be pinot grigio.

Laurel pulled a bottle of Cloudy Bay sauvignon blanc out of the fridge, and Belinda blinked. That had been Deacon’s favorite wine. He and Belinda had consumed… oh, six or seven thousand bottles of it over the course of their marriage. Belinda couldn’t bring herself to drink it after the divorce. But now she realized that Deacon had probably drunk that exact wine with Laurel-and with witchy-poo Scarlett!

Laurel poured two glasses. There’s no point in refusing it now, Belinda thought. The three of them were finally on equal footing. The man was dead.

Laurel held up her glass. “To Deacon,” she said.

“To Deacon,” Belinda said. As she and Laurel touched glasses, she thought, Deacon would not believe this if he saw it.

Belinda wondered how to ask about Angie. When was she due to arrive?

“So,” Belinda said. Her tone of voice, against her wishes, indicated that a big question was coming. She was an actress, but she couldn’t seem to convey nonchalance when it came to the thorny issues of her personal life. “When are the kids getting here?”

“This afternoon,” Laurel said. “They got a late start, I guess, but they’re supposed to be here in plenty of time for dinner.”

“Oh,” Belinda said. “Okay, good.”

“Have you not spoken to Angie?” Laurel asked.

“Not in a few days,” Belinda said, “a few” meaning ten, which was probably more like fourteen. “I’ve tried calling, and I got her voice mail. She and I… well, we aren’t as close as we used to be. ”

“But surely now…?” Laurel said.

“Surely now what?” Belinda said. She sat on one of the kitchen stools and twirled her wineglass. “Angie is so stubborn.”

“That she is,” Laurel said. “But this… well, it’s big. She’s going to need you, Belinda.”

“Is she?” Belinda said. She took another sip of wine. She didn’t like Laurel’s preaching. “After I married Bob and got pregnant with Mary, she accused me of not wanting her. Can you imagine? I don’t think a child has ever been more wanted. I gave up the lead in Ghost so that I could fly to Perth and then take a ten-hour ride in a Land Rover to the middle of godforsaken nowhere to get her. I went alone. Deacon couldn’t get away. He had just accepted the executive chef position at Raindance.”

“Wow,” Laurel said. “That seems like a long time ago.”

“Twenty-six years ago,” Belinda said. She had been twenty-six at the time herself. Was that possible? She became a mother at the same age that Angie was now? Well, Belinda had seemed much older. In 1980, she had seen the movie that changed her life, Ordinary People-and with the money she’d saved working the lunch counter at Pearson’s Drug Store in Iowa City, she had moved to L.A. By the time she was twenty-one, she had made eight movies. She met Deacon when she was twenty-three. He had been hired to cater an Oscars party Belinda had attended the year that she was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for Between the Pipes. She had been so busy chatting and accepting consolation (“You should have won, you were way better than Meryl…”) that she had neglected to eat anything, and after endless flutes of champagne, she stumbled into the food tent, sat on a stack of milk crates in her shell-pink Calvin Klein slip dress, kicked off her rhinestone stilettos, and said, “Can somebody please feed me?”

Deacon had appeared instantly, the sleeves of his chef’s jacket rolled up to reveal some pretty vivid tattoos; he was smoking a cigarette.

Belinda had batted her eyes at him. “I know you,” she said. “You’re the bad-boy chef who’s on opposite Carson.”

“And I know you,” Deacon said. “You’re the prima donna who lost tonight.”

Belinda had then tried out her pout. “I’m not a prima donna.”

“And I’m not a bad boy,” Deacon said.

Belinda pressed herself up against him and wrapped her arms around his neck. “Oh,” she said, “but I bet you are.”

Deacon had lifted her arms as if they were a couple of poisonous snakes. Belinda wasn’t used to being rebuffed in such a manner, or any manner. She wasn’t quite sure what to do.

Deacon said, “If you’re actually hungry, follow me.”

He led her to a section of the tent that she would later think of as the Land of a Thousand Sandwiches. There had been towers of tea sandwiches-egg, cucumber, radish, and butter-and artful stacks of double-decker turkey clubs and thick, messy Reubens oozing cheese and sauerkraut and Russian dressing; there had been platters of neat, rainbow-spiraled veggie wraps. There had been tuna salad on pumpernickel, chicken salad on nutty wheat, egg salad on glossy brioche rolls. There had been buttermilk biscuits loaded with ham and smeared with apricot chutney and grainy mustard; there had been cheesesteaks, and Mexican chicken studded with jewel-toned peppers, and rosy fillet of beef drizzled with creamy horseradish sauce on French baguettes. A choir of voices in Belinda’s head chanted Eat! Eat! Eat! Belinda lifted the biggest, messiest Reuben she could find and took a lusty bite.

“I recant,” Deacon said, taking the last drag of his cigarette and grinding it out under his kitchen clog. “No prima donna eats like that.”

She studied him over the top of her sandwich. She had seen several episodes of his show because she suffered from chronic insomnia and was always awake at midnight, when his show, Day to Night to Day with Deacon, aired. The show never included much cooking that Belinda could see. Deacon chopped something, threw a piece of whatever it was at his sous-chefs, called his sous-chefs names so profane that he got bleeped, flexed his muscles, flipped the dark shock of hair that perpetually fell into his eyes, then executed some theatrics with his sauté pan. The better part of the show, in Belinda’s opinion, was watching Deacon Thorpe prowl the city, looking for places to eat and drink after service was over. It was kind of sexy, Belinda thought, the way he roamed the dark city blocks like an animal. She envied his sangfroid. It was clear from watching the show that Deacon Thorpe didn’t care what the world thought of him. He didn’t care if people thought he was a foul-mouthed dirt merchant, he didn’t care if people thought he was a good cook, and he didn’t seem to care if he got held up at knifepoint in Alphabet City. He didn’t really seem to care about anything.

“This is so good,” Belinda said through a mouthful of corned beef.

He nodded once, then he produced a clean linen napkin from the pocket of his houndstooth pants and gently wiped the corner of Belinda’s mouth.

Belinda had finished the sandwich and returned to the party. The next day she called her agent, Leif Larsen, and asked if he could somehow get Deacon hired as the caterer on her new movie, Gypsy Red, which started filming in New York two weeks hence.

Leif had said, “He’s not a movie caterer, Bel. He’s a chef, and if you’re having impure thoughts about him, I’m telling you now that he’s also married. Do you not watch the end of each show? He goes home to his hot wife and their little boy. Those aren’t actors, babe. They’re real people.”

“You think his wife is hot?” Belinda asked. “I don’t think she’s that hot.”

“She’s hot,” Leif had said.

“There’s no way he’s faithful,” Belinda said. “Is there?”

“Belinda,” Leif said. “Don’t.”

“Okay,” Belinda said. “I won’t.”

But two weeks later, when she was in New York to start shooting Gypsy Red, she paid Deacon a visit at Solo. John Buckley had been the maître d’, although at the time Belinda hadn’t known who Buck was other than an awkwardly tall ginger with a cowlick who crumpled in the presence of Belinda’s fame and ushered her right back into the kitchen, albeit with the caveat, “Does he know you’re coming? He’s pretty busy. It’s the middle of service.”

“No,” she said. “This is a surprise visit.”

“Oh, okay?” Buck had said. “My name is John Buckley, and I’m also an agent. So if you need representation…?”

“I have representation,” Belinda had said, and she slipped through the double doors to the kitchen.

She found Deacon at a gleaming stove in his chef’s jacket, sleeves pulled down properly, a navy bandanna tied around his forehead. She had tapped him on the shoulder, and when he whipped around and saw her, he seemed nonplussed, almost as if he didn’t recognize her.

“Hey,” he said finally.

“It’s me,” she said. “The non-prima donna, Belinda Rowe.”

He blinked. “Are you eating in the restaurant?” he said. “I can send something out.”

“No,” she said. “I just stopped by to say hello. And to give you this.”

He turned halfway around. Belinda handed him a slip of paper with her room number at the St. Regis written on it. He took a second to read it, then he stared at her hard for a second.

“I’m married,” he said.

Belinda nodded once, her body growing stiff with mortification. She was an Academy Award-nominated actress. Leif was always telling her to keep her nose clean. Her career was on a crescendo; if she ended up on the front page of the tabloids for dating a married man, the leading-role offers would evaporate. And yet here she was, propositioning bad-boy chef Deacon Thorpe. She was devaluing her brand with every second she stood in this kitchen. And it wasn’t even that good a restaurant! Ruth Reichl had given it only two and a half stars in the Times, and she herself said that the half star was a donation because Chef Deacon Thorpe shows so much promise.

Deacon handed Belinda back the slip of paper and returned to his duties at the stove. Belinda had no choice but to slink out of the kitchen.