Our room that night was full of echoes. Wallis’s plaintive cry: You promised me! It chased me, from side to side, from ear to ear, no matter how I tossed and turned. It took long, too long, for the sleeping pill to find me. Echoing in my last thoughts, before I succumbed, was the sound of a ruptured promise. To Wallis, perhaps it had seemed, there in the bar, like the earth’s crust was cracking, its plates grinding apart. For me, the sound had been quieter, the subtle tear of thread, the fracture exposing the unflattering flesh beneath the seam.

The alarm on my phone woke me. The light through the curtains was gray; the room was overly warm. I sat up, searching for Wallis, feeling the remnants of nighttime sweat on the back of my neck and between my breasts. She was sitting at the rolltop desk, typing intently on her phone.

“Are you okay?” I asked, feeling the utter pointlessness of such a question.

“No,” Wallis answered. “What time is our flight?” I told her I’d have to call the airline. “You do that,” she said. “I have to go talk to Bo.”

“He might not be awake yet,” I said.

“He is,” Wallis said. “I’ve been texting him. I have to thank him for last night, and apologize.”

“That’s good of you,” I said, rubbing my eyes, trying to ready myself to face the day, which meant dealing with what happened—all of what happened—yesterday.

“It’s required,” Wallis said. “Although I don’t know how I’m going to look him in the eye.”

“We also should prostrate ourselves before Collette Reed,” I said, stretching my arms above my head.

“Add it to the list,” she said. “Wallis Richardson’s Tour of Apology. Let’s make T-shirts.” She tore off her pajamas and threw them toward her suitcase. When she missed, I thought she might start screaming. Instead: “You never have to do this, Daisy. You never make an ass of yourself in public.”

This was so absurd I almost laughed. I rose from the bed, stood before her, my hands on her shoulders. “That’s objectively false,” I said, recalling Atlas, the way I’d lunged toward him with a passion that was entirely unreciprocated.

Wallis made a sound like she disagreed, then pulled away to half-heartedly rummage through her suitcase. After she’d tugged on a short-sleeve blouse and frayed jean shorts, she left to find Bo. Meanwhile, I got myself through the airline’s automated system to an actual human, who switched us to a noon flight for the minor fee of a couple hundred dollars. Onto my credit card. A full savings account was officially a distant dream.

In the hallway, there were shuffles. Floorboards creaked. The house was waking up.