“I have to tell you a story about what happened to me today,” he said, flopping on my couch. “It involves my apartment building email LISTSERV, an emotional support peacock, a broken elevator, and Vlad, my maintenance man, whose side hustle involves selling energy crystals and men’s jewelry.”

“Perfect.” I made the executive decision that water was the best choice for him, so I grabbed us two glasses from the kitchen and joined him on the couch. His hair was disheveled on top, his dress shirt, which seemed like it was once crisp, was untucked from his jeans.

He took the glass and chugged most of it in a few gulps. “But first,” he said when he surfaced, “tell me about your day. Where did you go, who did you see, what was everything about everything?”

I dropped my head back into the cushions and laughed. “What was everything?” I repeated.

“It’s a simple question.” His shoulders began to heave with laughter. “What is everything regarding everything?”

With his inebriation, as he’d called it, my week felt less devastatingly serious. “Help me with something,” I said, comforted by his presence, thinking I might as well bring up the subject that had been eating at me before he’d waltzed in. He was the only one in the world, at this point, with whom I felt secure enough to talk to about it. Not wanting to ruin the mood, I kept my voice casual. “How do you think Melinda Darley—soon to be Secretary Darley—found out about my father and the tuition money?”

“She knows?” He ran his hand over his end-of-day stubble. “Shit. Her camp must’ve gotten to Andrea Pell, too. That’s the way I found out. Your father, apparently, had said something to her, and I followed the clues to his office’s expenditure statements...”

“Andrea. His...lover,” I muttered, tripping over the last word. Here was yet another person in the world who knew, or at least suspected, that I was the reason for my father’s entrée into financial dishonesty. “What more,” I asked, “did she tell you? I’m just wondering what else Darley’s people know.”

Atlas finished his water; he appeared more sober now, his eyes less squiggly. He faced me, serious. “If it gives you any peace,” he said, “she did say that your father had every intention in the world of paying the money back. But—”

“But he never did.”

“One bad decision becomes another, and then another.” He winced. “If Melinda Darley knows—”

“We have intel on her. And we’ve made an arrangement,” I interrupted. “Thanks to Ari, actually.” Her name seemed to have an effect on him. He blinked, shifted, breaking our eye contact. “Your turn,” I prompted, trying to reclaim the light mood of moments ago. “Tell me about Vlad?”