Lina’s favorite times were the weekend nights when both Logan and Katie would stay in. Matt would come over and sometimes Brian or another of Logan’s friends, and the house would be filled with the bustle of activity. Her estrangement from Phil felt more real with each passing week. Although he was a frequent visitor, either to pick up Logan or do one of the myriad of chores that inevitably popped up in the house—a clogged sink one day, an unhinged closet door the next—he’d made no attempt to engage Lina in any discussions of substance since the phone call about his son.

Gradually, Lina had transformed from a married, stay-at-home mom to a single, working mom, and although she didn’t make enough money as a stager to support her current lifestyle without Phil’s financial assistance, his help was now legally guaranteed, and therefore for all intents and purposes, she’d attained the independence she craved. She was free to do and be whatever she wanted.

“Wow!” Adele said, fanning herself as soon as Katie and Matt left the house. “If I was twenty-five years younger, I would fight her for him. He’s swoon worthy. Those eyes and—”

“Calm down,” Lina said. “You’re starting to creep me out.”

“I’m serious,” Adele said as she followed Lina towards the kitchen. “He’s what I imagine James Dean was like. Sensitive bad boy, but with a voice. Can’t you just imagine girls in the audience stripping as soon as he opens his mouth?”

“Seriously.” Lina gripped Adele’s shoulders. “You spend too much time with Mom. Normal people don’t talk like that about their niece’s eighteen-year-old boyfriend.”

“‘Normal people’? You sound like Phil.”

“No, I sound like me.”

The vibration of the music filled Katie’s body as she and Emma stood to the left of the dance floor, just two among the throng of people packed into an eighteen-and-over club in Baltimore listening to Fugitive.

“I have to take a video for Ryan,” Emma yelled to be heard over the crowd. “Matt’s, like, famous. Look at all these people.”

It was overwhelming. When Matt said he could get her and Emma in to listen to him play, Katie pictured a gathering similar to the ones that used to come to hear Ryan’s band—fifty or so people—but this was a sold-out venue of at least two hundred, and if the chatter around her was any indication, the majority were there to hear the group’s new singer, Matt Hudson.

“He’s so hot,” a girl beside her was saying. “He’s met my eyes like three times. I’m going meet him during the next break. I’ll blow him if there’s time,” she said, eliciting giggles from her friends.