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was holding court today. She could never understand how her mother, who spent thirteen hours a day deposing white-collar witnesses and decoding multimillion-dollar contracts, could lose herself so thoroughly in the melodrama of overacted soaps.
    “Good morning,” Bridget huffed, wiping her forehead with the back of one slim wrist. “I thought we might go shopping later.”
    Olivia turned her head from the television back to the treadmill, her eyes wide with scrambled alarm. “What?” she asked, trying to remember the last time her mother had proposed that they do anything together. “I mean, why?”
    Bridget jabbed at the electronic buttons on the dash, lowering the incline and slowing her pace to a brisk walk. “There’s an event Saturday night,” she said, gripping the handles, her manicured fingernails wrapping delicately around the shinymetal bars. “A cocktail party at the office, to welcome me—all of us—into town.”
    “Tomorrow?” Olivia asked, as if she might already have plans. It seemed the only possible way out.
    Bridget nodded. “All of my nice things are still in boxes.” She sighed. “And it’s been a while since we’ve shopped for you. What do you think?”
    Olivia tucked one bare foot back behind the other, her eyes blurring over the hypnotically cycling mechanical belt. It hadn’t been a while. It had been exactly seven months, two weeks, and three days.
    The only thing Violet and their mother had ever agreed on had been the overwhelming satisfaction achieved by touching things in fancy stores, trying them on, wrapping them up, and bringing them home. Although it was not a pastime Olivia had much interest in, she often tagged along, if only to watch Violet veto Bridget’s more conservative selections. It was the one occasion on which Bridget deferred to her eccentric daughter’s expertise, and Olivia loved to see her mother, for once, in the position of asking for help.
    Now the idea of the two of them wandering aimlessly in and out of boutiques, not only strangers in a new city but doubly lost without the guidance of their shopping guru, was enough to make Olivia’s inner ears ache.
    “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t really feel like going to a party.”
    Bridget’s light eyes were sharp and focused as she slowed to a stop and stepped off the machine. “Well, you don’t have to come,” she spoke evenly. “But it might be fun.”
    Olivia shifted her weight from one bare foot to the other,every cell in her body begging to be released and allowed to run back upstairs to her room, where nobody asked her to do things like shop or be polite.
    “Phoebe Greer will be there with her son,” Bridget continued. “Miles, I think. I asked her to arrange for him to show you around yesterday. Did he find you?”
    “Yeah,” Olivia managed. “He found me.”
    “Good,” Bridget confirmed. “Then you’ll have somebody to talk to at the party.” She laid a firm hand on Olivia’s shoulder as she squeezed past her into the narrow hall. “But,” she said, with a tight, awkward smile, “only if you feel up to it.”
    Just about the last thing Olivia felt up to doing was getting dressed up and standing awkwardly with plastic cups and tiny plates of hors d’oeuvres and not enough hands to eat them. But she knew that smile. And she knew where arguing would get her. This was her mother’s game, and Olivia’s only option was to play along.
    “Fine,” she grumbled. “But I don’t need to go shopping. I’m sure I can find something in my closet to wear.”
    Bridget nodded and gave Olivia’s shoulder a tiny squeeze. “It’s up to you.” She shrugged, smiling coolly and inching past her daughter toward the stairs.
    That afternoon, Olivia stood with her hands on her hips, staring vacantly into the open closet.
    Her second day at Golden Gate had been interminably long and deafeningly quiet, and she’d somehow managed to get by without uttering more than forty-eight words.