“We didn’t have a hand in planning anything,” says Page. “We basically got an invite list and some cards to send out amongst family, and that was it.” She takes a deep, long swig of her spritz, mimicking my own quick chug. “But I guess Odilie would have liked it. I wouldn’t really know.”

Mandy gives her daughter a pointed glance. “She liked flowers. She liked pretty things. She would have liked this, even if we had no hand in planning it.”

“Especially because we had no hand,” Page murmurs. She turns to me. “Want to leave? I could go for something a little stronger.” She widens her eyes, her lash extensions rising up toward her brow. My first instinct is to say no. It’s too weird. I did enough by coming here and chatting with them, validating Quinn’s very astute point that they actually did want to group-grieve with me.

But she’s looking at me so candidly, so sincerely, that I can’t help but blurt a “Sure,” spunkier and more forthright than I’m used to being with anyone, at least for a very long time.

“Yay! I saw a bar on the corner that looks good. Mom, Dad—I’ll check in with you tonight?” They nod, their acquiescence spooking me just a tad. It seems so genial and so odd. They’re not foisting Page on me. If anything, she’s foisting herself. But now they’ll be here, in this place where they feel so excluded, without her.

“I’ll see you back at the apartment?” Quinn calls to me as Page leads me away. I answer affirmatively, look back and watch my only support system fade into the background of the party. We go into the lobby to grab our phones and then, instead of exiting out the front door, she leads me in another loop around the event, keeping close to the spear-topped iron fencing surrounding the enclosure. Somehow, no one is looking at us; no one is staring. It’s like Page is a shield blocking me. Or maybe no one cares anymore, the spectacle of the family and the other woman coming together dulled by the alcohol, by more distracting topics of conversation.

We slip out a side gate that leads into an alley and then onto the street. I wonder how Page knew about this spot, whether she had planned out escape routes the moment she entered the courtyard. We’re immediately accosted by the blaring sounds of cars and trucks whizzing past on the way to the Westside Highway, noise that was somehow muffled by the shrubbery.