An Unexpected Guest

Clare Moorhouse is an American in Paris who has been leading a graceful life abroad. There are pleasures to being married to a high-ranking diplomat, but there are also appearances to be upheld and responsibilities to be executed-like tonight's unexpected dinner party, one crucial to her husband's career. As Clare navigates the spring-green streets of Paris, shopping for fresh stalks of asparagus, the right cheese and seasonal flowers for the table, she is haunted by a brief period of violence in her past that threatens to resurface and crack the immaculate veneer she's worked hard to achieve. At tonight's dinner, her husband hopes to receive a new posting and an advancement. But to Clare the potential move means wrestling with a secret that has been deeply and carefully buried for twenty years-or so she thought.
The myriad preparations for an official dinner are only the beginning of her day's complications. In the midst of it all, Clare's son shows up on her doorstep, inexplicably at large from his boarding school. But much more unsettling is a face in the crowd that she glimpses again and again. A face that belonged to that other, darker era of her life, and one she never expected to see again.