“Shower,” I said, rolling over and grasping my phone from the bedside table so I could forage online for any intel that might verify the rumor Judge Reed had relayed. I couldn’t say anything to Wallis without confirmation. “Or don’t. Bo is going to take us to see a very old house with some old furniture. He wants to have lunch at one of these trendy places uptown where you can order brisket or a banh mi. It’s going to be casual. You don’t have to wash your hair.” Blake Darley, on the ticket. The thought of it made me ill.

Across the room, Wallis declared that she was not going to shower. Then she changed her mind. Her waffling, about a shower, of all things, annoyed me. I put down my phone and scooted up on the pillows. I could feel my hair plastered to my scalp. If anyone needed a shower, it was me. “Why the torment over a shower?” I asked, searching Blake’s name on my browser.

She didn’t answer; instead, she resumed the task of taking each item of clothing out of her suitcase and laying it over the arms and back of the rocking chair.

The bathroom free, for the time being, I gave up my search and dragged myself to the mirror over the sink to inspect my damage. It was just as bad as expected. I was stealing some of Wallis’s makeup remover pads when the chime of an incoming text sounded.

“Where did I put my phone?” I heard Wallis ask, slightly panicked.

“I think that was my phone,” I called.

“Yes,” she said after a moment. “It was yours. A text from Atlas.”

She leaned against the bathroom door and held out my phone. “Or should I say, about a million texts from Atlas.”

Last night’s borrowed mascara only half-removed, I took my phone, put it on silent. “Thanks,” I said. “I’ll get back to him in a minute.”

“Just answer the texts, Daisy. Jesus. Quit playing these games with him.” She marched to the shower, yanked back the curtain, turned on the water.

“You’re showering?” A question with an obvious answer, but—I don’t know—a second ago it seemed like she was about to pick a fight with me and here she’d abandoned it so quickly. I’d been ready to try to understand, to draw out the real reason for her frustration with me.

“Yes. I’m expecting a text from Blake. We’re going to meet later.”

Speaking of games. I hesitated, hoping that she might expound, but she just undressed and stepped in the spray. “I see,” I said.

The bathroom filled with steam, I gave up on my makeup removal and turned to my phone, Atlas’s texts. She’d been right; there were already many of them, and more kept coming. I skimmed, anticipating Ari’s name splashed everywhere. Instead: