Ellie didn’t know what to say, so she said nothing, just listened and watched the woman’s eyes darting behind her sunglasses.

“Then I came back here and—I dunno. I just couldn’t handle it.”

“Because of Paul?”

“And this.” Candice made a sweeping gesture to the crystal blue sky.

“You don’t like LA?”

Candice snorted. “This city is an open-air insane asylum. That’s why it attracts psychopaths and predators.” She drained the last of her mimosa. “It’s all going to burn to the ground, I’m sure.”

“The wildfires.”

Candice nodded. “Can you smell the smoke in the air?”

Ellie could, actually, and wondered if Candice was right about the city burning to the ground. From everything she’d read and heard, the wildfires were closing in from all sides, the already-overworked firefighters unable to hold them back.

“So,” Candice said, “how do you know about me?”

Ellie had anticipated the question. “Paul mentioned your name a couple of times—you know, when you talk about exes and stuff.”

“Oh? And what did he say?” Candice kept her voice light.

“Nothing but good things,” Ellie assured her.

“I find that hard to believe.”

“Everything was going fine between us—at least I thought everything was gone fine—and then he suddenly stopped calling me.”

“He probably ghosted you.”

“I definitely thought that at first. Then I came to find out, a few weeks back, that no one’s seen or heard from him in months.”

“He moved?”

Ellie caught the palpable relief buried in Candice’s question. “That’s the thing,” Ellie said. “No one knows.”

“I didn’t meet many of Paul’s friends.”

“I’m sure you met his BFF, Bradley Guidry.”

“Never heard of him,” Candice said quickly.

Ellie knew the woman was lying; Candice’s response was too fast. Ellie let it go for the moment.

“You talk to his mother?” Candice asked.

Ellie reminded herself to keep her answers as vague as possible; she didn’t want to get caught in a lie. She was about to speak when Candice’s face contorted, and then the woman said, “Shit, I forgot she died. Cancer, I think.”

“I never met her.”

“She was nice. I liked her. Her and his stepfather, Sebastian. You talk to him?”

“I never met him, either. All that time I was together with Paul, I never met his parents—he rarely talked about them with me. I just assumed they weren’t, you know, close.”

“Well,” Candice said, picking up her glass, “trust me when I say you’re better off without him.”

“That’s pretty much what my therapist told me. Called him a malignant narcissist.”

“Your therapist sounds like a smart woman. You should definitely listen to her.”

“I am. Well, I should say I’m trying to.” Ellie chuckled, a part of her feeling guilty for manipulating this woman who was so clearly emotionally damaged. “She keeps telling me I need to move on—and I want to. Honestly, I do. But like I said on the phone, there’s this part of me that keeps demanding to know why.”