The one-bedroom house Lily and I were sharing was smaller than the one I’d grown up in, but instead of dollar-store shower curtains, a hand-sewn privacy curtain sectioned Lily’s bedroom off from the living room. She’d taken to shopping at flea markets and thrift shops to furnish our place, and the decorations—even the faded and chipped ones—showcased what even I could recognize as impeccable taste.

“Knock, knock!” my mom called as she entered through the front door.

We really needed to start making use of the lock.

“Trick still huffy that I told that gentleman exactly what I could do to him with a sterling silver salad fork?” Lily asked.

Normally, my mom would have grinned in response. She’d been surprised four months earlier when we’d shown up on her doorstep, to say the least.

Coming back to the town where I’d grown up had been Lily’s idea. I’d spent a year in her world. She’d wanted to give mine a try. I’d asked her once and only once if she was sure about putting college on hold, and she’d told me that college would still be there when we were ready.

Both of us.

Lily needed a chance to figure out who she was when she wasn’t trying to be what other people wanted, and I needed to find my way to putting the past to rest and living now, with no backup plans and no feet out the door.

I thought of Nick most days but had only called him once. He hadn’t answered.

“Is Trick actually upset with me this time?” Lily asked, startled by my mom’s lack of response to her initial question about The Holler’s owner.

“Trick couldn’t get upset with you if he tried,” my mom assured Lily. “And no one would dream of taking umbrage to any threats you may or may not have made involving salad forks and soup spoons.”

“What were you going to do with the soup spoon?” I asked. But my gaze stayed on my mom, because something had brought her to our door, and I had the general sense that something wasn’t good.

“Lily, sweetheart . . .” My mom’s tone confirmed my assumption. “There’s someone at the bar looking for you.”

My mom almost never referred to The Holler as “the bar.”

“Is it Lillian?” I asked. I’d been waiting for this since the night Lily and I had shown up here, both of us wet and me wearing a scarlet robe.

“No,” my mom said gingerly. “It’s Ana.”

It took everything I had to stay in the position I’d taken up near the pool table and not join Ana Gutierrez and Lily at the bar.

“She’s going to be okay,” my mom told me. “Our Lily’s equal parts sugar and steel.”