My mother-in-law brought thirty-eight friends into my restaurant, ordered the most expensive menu on it, and told them she was paying. Then she started boasting about my husband’s new girlfriend — and I looked across the room at the young woman refilling their water.

Tobias recommended her. He said a friend’s daughter was looking for work and was brilliant with people.

She is. She is the best host I have had.

The three hundred a month is going into her account.

She was standing at that side table with a jug of water when Constance said gorgeous young girl, and I watched her hand stop over a glass and not move.

Constance Rook had never once looked at her. She had been served by her four times that year and had not looked at her face.

She sat there boasting to thirty-eight women about her son’s girlfriend while the girlfriend topped up their water.

At about half past four I took the bill in myself.

Twenty-three thousand two hundred and eighty-nine dollars.

And a folder, which I put down beside it.

In the folder: the bill. Then three years of comp slips, reprinted at menu price, with a total at the bottom. Then fourteen months of that supplier card, highlighted. Then one page on my own letterhead closing the Rook family account with immediate effect.