Under Lynne’s watchful eye, Jane gritted her teeth and chatted with Ben Jameson (the up-and-coming state senator), Sandy Kovanski (the new Times’ food critic), and his wife, Bethany (who was from one of the oldest families in New York). During Samuel Robero, Esquire’s, seemingly endless description of pending legislation to allow for prosecuting corporate whistle-blowers, Jane thought that she glimpsed Maeve outside in the sculpture garden. But the door felt impossibly far away, especially with Lynne at her side, apparently hell-bent on dragging out each conversation for as long as humanly possible before steering Jane toward the next one.

Lynne had had a point at that first lunch, Jane realized: being a Doran was downright exhausting. She could already feel that she would wake up drained and empty the next morning; an afternoon of calling caterers for April’s ASPCA-looza would be about all she could handle. However irritated she was at Lynne, Jane was forced to grudgingly admire the woman. She took her role as matriarch incredibly seriously, and watching her face round after round of inane socializing with unflagging intensity was kind of impressive.

Finally, while Kathleen Houck (heiress to a pharmaceutical fortune) was happily comparing the merits of various hybrid car models, Jane felt Lynne draw silently away from their little circle. I guess she thinks I finally have the hang of it? But Jane had no interest in continuing her slow circuit of the room. She counted to twenty in her head, and then excused herself: it was long past time to find Maeve.

Jane had accumulated so many questions during her three weeks in New York that she wasn’t entirely sure what she was expecting to hear. The night, the Dorans themselves, was like a strange scattering of puzzle pieces, and she had a feeling that Maeve could make sense of the larger picture.

She headed purposefully to the sculpture garden, but the fierce crop of red curls was conspicuously absent from the clusters of guests scattered around. Jane began to work her way systematically back around the room, but the closest thing she found to Maeve was Harris. It’s a start, she decided, and had begun to stride toward him when she spotted Maeve at last, walking smoothly out through the front door.

So I didn’t get an explanation, and now I don’t even get a good-bye? Jane frowned, stung. Maeve’s retreating form looked frail and fragile in her emerald-green cocktail dress. Watching her elfin frame, Jane realized abruptly that Maeve hadn’t just skipped her good-byes: she had also bypassed the coat check. Unseasonably warm or not, it was still near eleven o’clock in January, and Maeve would freeze with nothing between her and the cold but a thin layer of charmeuse.

“Maeve, wait!” Jane hurried for the door, accidentally bumping into someone’s rum-and-Coke along the way. She heard an exclamation as the dark liquid spilled in her wake, but she barely registered the commotion. The short hallway that separated the door from the lobby was empty and dark, but Jane caught sight of Maeve as she drifted outside. She glowed like a torch on the sidewalk, the streetlamps reflecting off her creamy skin. Maeve didn’t seem to notice the cold at all; in fact, she was walking slowly toward the street, arms relaxed at her sides. Was she drunk?

That was when Jane noticed another woman—very tall, wearing a smart brown sheath—standing just outside the streetlamp’s circle of light. Lynne. She had left the party to . . . stand outside the museum in the cold? Jane hesitated in the lobby, confused. It made an odd tableau: two women in cocktail-wear in the middle of the night on a deserted street.

Not deserted, exactly. The light at the corner winked green and a cadre of cars started toward the museum. As Jane waited for Maeve to raise her arm to hail a cab, an odd tingling stirred the fine hairs on her bare arms, as if millions of tiny electric shocks were bouncing through her veins, rooting Jane to her spot on the marble floor. She could see Lynne’s lips moving. The sound didn’t reach her, but she could see that Lynne was staring at Maeve with a malevolent intensity. In the darkness, her eyes looked like twin tar-pits, black and bottomless. Then Jane felt another surge of electricity dance through her blood as Maeve, arms still at her sides, stepped off the curb into oncoming traffic.

“Maeve, stop!” Jane shouted. Her limbs finally sprung to life and she launched herself outside. “Maeve!”

But her friend just continued out into the middle of the street, her glossy black pumps tapping distinctly over the roar of approaching traffic.

“Stop,” Jane screamed again.

Maeve paused in the middle of the walkway, looking luminous, fragile, and, apparently, completely invisible to the driver of the taxi bearing down on her.

Screams rent the air as Maeve folded against the bumper of the car like a piece of tissue paper. Her body slid limply across the hood before striking the ground with a dull thud. It was only then that Jane heard the screeching of brakes and several loud blows of horns. Too late. Her thoughts felt slow, disconnected. Way, way too late.

Women shrieked, men bellowed, and the entire cocktail party spilled outside. Harris shoved past Jane as he ran toward his sister’s collapsed form. She followed him numbly, sidestepping the driver, who was shaking and babbling beside his taxi as if those two tons of metal had driven into Maeve of their own volition.

“She’s breathing, thank God,” Harris cried, his cell phone in his hand before Jane fully registered his words. In the beat before his call connected, he looked up and saw Jane hovering over him. “Get a doctor,” he snapped coldly, and then turned away to give their location to the 911 operator.

Jane stumbled back to the crowd of dazed-looking partygoers milling around in front of the museum. Her carefully crafted guest list swam in front of her mind’s eye. There was Dr. Headly-Kim, and Dr. Tamez, and Dr. Wilson, but I’m pretty sure his PhD was in something like politics.

“She needs a doctor,” Jane croaked as loudly as she could, and was relieved to see a stocky man, bald head shining under the streetlamp, remove his tuxedo jacket and move toward the Montagues purposefully. Maeve lay perfectly, painfully still, and that immobility brought Jane back to the moments before the accident.

Lynne.

Wind whipped around her bare shoulders and the wail of sirens zoomed closer and closer. She couldn’t see the tall woman anywhere in the crowd. She realized belatedly that she didn’t remember passing Lynne when she had run out to the curb. It was as if Lynne had vanished clear off the sidewalk. But that was impossible . . . right?

Jane’s blood hummed through her veins and her silver ring vibrated on her finger, and suddenly she knew exactly what Maeve had been ready to tell her back at the party.

And that Lynne had been prepared to kill Maeve to keep her from doing just that.