She listened with half an ear as Raoul launched into a short but impassioned discourse regarding the monarchy of Spain, which he was not keen on, and then for some reason segued into a description of a hellish-sounding club tower where forty thousand people went to party every night. Compton closed one eye and leaned her face against the cool glass of the van’s large backseat window. They were headed to the top of Montjuïc to take a few selfies against the backdrop of the city before embarking on a tour of a few more of the highlights of Barcelona: the Gothic Quarter, the Basílica de la Sagrada Família, and Park Güell. She stole a moment to tap out a quick text to Ellis, who last night had sent a series of rambling questions regarding the location of various basic items of the children’s. By unspoken mutual consent, they had not addressed the elephant between them, but Compton deliberately constructed her texts to sound kind and supportive. Even without a major life upheaval looming on the horizon, she’d been accused of sounding terse and bossy in past texts to people, and she didn’t want Ellis to think she was dismissing out of hand his idea of moving from the city. The truth was she still didn’t know what she thought about it. In fact, she decided, she would not think; there’d be plenty of time to sort this out with Ellis when she returned. For once in her life, she planned to defer responsibility and duty.

Atop Montjuïc the women scrambled over a series of stone terraces and sucked in their breaths at the magnificence of Barcelona, spread out below them in a patchwork of golden red-roofed buildings stretching all the way to the hazy mountains at the horizon. A few beams of sun shot though a sky roiling with heavy, fast-moving clouds, pooling in glinting ponds on the surface of the terraces.

“ ‘I am alive, and drunk on sunlight,’ ” said Vani, spinning with her arms out, tilting her face to catch one of the pockets of eerie light. Above her, a golden, bare-breasted statue of a woman reclined atop a pedestal.

“Shakespeare?”

“George R. R. Martin. Game of Thrones series.”