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“Then consider it done.”

He drank his wine and kept his eyes on me. There was something different in the gleam, something so unexpected that I felt my heart beat faster. It was similar to looks I had seen in the eyes of some of the boys I had dated, looks that raised alarms. At a party, if I had sipped something alcoholic, I immediately stopped, and invitations to go somewhere private were always avoided or rejected. To see something in Donald March that resembled this was even more alarming, because as far as I knew, this was the first time someone as old as he was looked at me with what I could call nothing but lust.

Perhaps I was overreacting, I thought. I hoped so. Perhaps the wine had clouded his thinking a little. I glanced at Jordan to see if she sensed anything similar in his attention to me, but she was so happy about the change in his mood at dinner and the promises he was making that she wouldn’t see anything like that anyway.

“Well, we’ll need to shop for a proper new dress for you, Sasha,” she said.

“Exactly,” Donald agreed. “Get her something that is more adult, something that brings out her maturity, and none of this faddy teenage stuff.”

Finally, he was treading on Jordan’s hallowed ground and doing something to rile her.

“I think I know where to take her and what to buy her for such an occasion, Donald.”

“Oh, right, right,” he said. “If anyone does, you do, Jordan. You can trust her judgment when it comes to things like this,” he told me to emphasize the point. He reached out and patted Jordan’s hand. She smiled again, but I thought he was merely placating her and, in fact, treating her the way he might treat Kiera.

She didn’t see it that way. She brightened. “This is wonderful,” she said. “We’ll feel more like a family. Maybe Kiera will come home for this concert,” she suggested.

“She has never shown interest in anything like this before,” Donald said sharply. Then he smiled. “In any case, you had better call her immediately. These are impossible tickets to get. I’m not even sure I can get us three yet.”

“I thought you just said . . .”

“I meant I would try to call in a favor.”

She looked confused. “But . . . you just agreed that I should get Sasha a new dress and—”

“She would need it anyway,” he said. “There’ll be many other occasions like the concert, I’m sure.” He rose. “I have a couple of things to do before I can relax for the evening. Ladies,” he added with a smile, “please excuse me.”

He walked out of the dining room. Jordan looked after him and then shrugged.

“Men,” she said.

Later, after I went up to my room to start my homework, the phone rang. I was hoping it was Ryder, but it was Kiera.

“What’s this about a concert? I couldn’t understand my mother. My father was never big on classical music. He wants me to come home for it?”

I didn’t want to say it wasn’t his idea, it was her mother’s.

“That’s what was said at dinner.”

“Maybe he’s going through some midlife crisis. Men can have them at any age. I can tell you this. I’m not going to run home to go to hear a classical symphony concert. They’re buying you a new dress for it?” she asked after a short pause.

“Yes.”

“Whose idea was that?” she questioned sharply.

“Well, your father thought I didn’t have anything appropriate.”

“He never cared if I had anything appropriate.”

I was silent.

“He probably is going through some sort of man’s change of life. Has he seemed very different lately?”

“I haven’t seen him all that much lately. He’s been so busy.”

“Um. Well, I certainly wouldn’t leave Richard on a weekend and go sit in a stuffy concert hall. Besides, I’d have to go buy a new dress, and I don’t have the time for it like you do.”

“Well, I am in the school orchestra and . . .”