Keep up your strength, mate. You need to keep things in hand.

He kept the refrain on a loop as he walked home. Keep it together, keep it together, keep it together.

What if someone had harmed her? His stomach heaved at the thought.

Inside the too-empty house, he puttered from room to room. Imagining. If she wouldn’t be coming home, was he obligated to keep the heavy orange silk curtains he didn’t like? Then admonishing himself: Don’t be daft, man, she’s coming back.

He’d felt this same way when Dashiell died. He’d known his son wouldn’t ever be found giggling in his crib again, and yet he’d circle the house and find himself staring into the nursery as if he could conjure the child from thin air.

Ghosts. He was surrounded by ghosts. Of those he’d wronged, and those he’d disappointed, and those he’d failed.

The doorbell rang. He ran to the foyer and pulled open the door with teeth bared, only to see Ivy on the step, suitcase and briefcase in hand, an UberBLACK Suburban driving away.

A calm came over him. He took his first real breath all day.

“Thank God. Sanity arrives. You got here fast.”

“I was able to get an earlier flight.”

He took her suitcase, ushered her inside, and shut the door gently behind her. “Why didn’t you go home first? It’s not like it’s far.”

“I could tell how worried you were. Are. I’ll go home once we have a handle on what’s happening.”

“You’re a good friend, Ivy.”

A good friend, and a handsome woman. He didn’t want to notice, but he was a man, after all. It was hard not to. Since she’d moved to Franklin, and she and Sutton had become bosom buddies, he’d been treated to Ivy in every stage of dress. She didn’t try to hide her real self from them.

Today she was all done up, and the effect was pleasing. Short black skirt, long bare legs, those nude pumps Duchess Kate wore all the time. She’d cut her hair since he saw her last—what was it, two weeks ago, when they’d had dinner at Grays? It was blonder, a fashionable long bob with the back slightly shorter, asymmetrically driving toward the front. He purposely skipped over her torso, did not see the button undone nor the black lace spilling out of the crack in her blouse, no he did not.

“Nice do.”

She touched the back of her hair self-consciously. “Thank you. Still no word?”

“No. The weird sisters were by, though.”

“I wish you wouldn’t call them that. They’re my friends, too, you know.”

“But you’re the only one who can remotely understand the reference. Outside of Sutton, of course.”

“I know, you’re the intellectual giant among us. I’d think Ellen would get it, at least. She is a librarian—”

“Ellen’s an ignorant shrew, and you know it.”

That brought out a rare smile. “Still.” Ivy helped herself to a glass and pulled a bottle of water from the fridge. “Talk to me, Ethan. What do you really think is happening here?”