“I hated that she was older,” she said. “When I was younger at least. If she was still here, I’d probably never shut up about it.”

“I’m sorry.” Izzy wondered how long it had been since Lacey had been forced to think about Monroe so much. And here they were stomping through everything that must have been grieved and buried and somewhat healed. Now Lacey was sketching her dead sister on cheap bar napkins.

Lacey played with the pack of cigarettes, her nail picking at the seams of the box, before she tapped it against her thigh and then brought it up to spin on the wood again. So fidgety. After a few seconds, she seemed to make some decision. “Max, I’m lighting up, and you can kiss my ass if you tell me not to.”

“Hey,” the bartender dragged out the protest as he pointed to a THANK YOU FOR NOT SMOKING sign hung up behind him.

“You want to call the police on me? Oh, wait, they’re already here.” Lacey tipped her head toward Izzy while digging for a lighter in her little black bag, the cigarette between her lips, the red of them shocking against the white of the paper.

Izzy shrugged when Max looked her way. He grumbled, but when Lacey just raised a perfectly tailored brow and blew smoke out of the corner of her mouth, he rolled his eyes and turned away.

“Thanks,” Lacey said, tugging in another hit of the nicotine. As a former smoker, Izzy knew the way it slithered into your veins and made everything that had been ricocheting around go still.

They sat in silence, which was surprisingly companionable rather than awkward, Izzy working through her Eagle Rare that had gotten better by the fourth or fifth sip, Lacey with her vice of choice.

“We both had so much blackmail material on each other.” Lacey once again was the one to break first. Izzy recognized the need to talk, the need for someone else to know the person you were missing, even though it was impossible for them to do so. “If either of us had started snitching, we would never have seen daylight again.”

“I thought your parents were hippie types,” Izzy said, keeping her eyes on the rows of bottles in front of her. It seemed wise not to look at Lacey, not to startle her when she was talking so freely.

“Mom was,” Lacey said, and the affection there was clear. “Dad, not so much.”

That’s what Mia had said, as well. Bix and Charles Bell, a case of opposites attract. Or maybe not.

“Your father was strict with you two?”

Lacey laughed, but there was no humor in it. “Strict. Yeah.” She dropped the rest of the cigarette into her almost empty wineglass and pushed it away.

“Lacey,” Max muttered, but he blushed when she winked at him.