Patricia Calloway did not do anything halfway.
This extended to New Year's Eve, which she treated as a personal challenge — the final event of the year, the one that had to send everyone home feeling like something good was coming. She had been hosting New Year's at the brownstone for fifteen years and had refined it into something that felt effortless precisely because of how much effort went into it.
Champagne. The good kind. Gerald's playlist, which was — against all reasonable expectation — excellent. The rooftop terrace strung with lights that Patricia kept up year-round because she believed the garden deserved them even in December, even in the cold, even when there was nothing to see but bare branches and the amber sky.
I arrived at nine.
Three days had passed since the Christma
