“I don’t know if I can not take it. I’m going to lose so many clients because of this. People trust me with a lot of details about their lives. And they’re right to be angry. To be suspicious of me.”

“Lark was suspicious,” Sibby says, and my stomach drops.

“Lark, I was serious. There’s nothing in there. I haven’t done this in months. I was going through—”

“Suspicious is the wrong word,” Lark says reassuringly. “I was . . . hopeful?”

“Hopeful?”

Lark cracks the planner, presses her thumb against the pages so they shuffle past in the way of a flip-book. She shrugs. “I stared at every page, every letter. When I got to the end I realized I was looking for something pretty specific.”

“God,” says Sibby. “The suspense is killing me here.”

Lark smirks, but then she looks at me. “I think it’s not working out with Cam. Or it’s not working out in New York. I’m not sure which.”

“Oh, Lark,” I say.

“Well, it’s not New York’s fault,” Sibby says, defensively, and I can’t help but smile. But then I feel another pang of sadness about Reid, Reid and Sibby. It would have been fun, to watch them argue about New York, to teasingly pile on him about it. But maybe that will never happen now.

I refocus on Lark. “Did something happen?”

She shrugs. “No, but . . . I mean. You’ve met him.”

“Yikes,” says Sibby. What Reid and Sibby would one hundred percent have in common is absolute derision for a shark-tooth necklace.

“I don’t know if it was ever right between me and him,” Lark says. “I don’t know if we can work it out, either. I don’t even know if I want to.” She looks down again at the planner, smooths her hand over the cover. “I think maybe I was hoping you had the answer.”

“I definitely don’t,” I say, and I mean it. I am the last person to be advising people about their relationships. “But I will talk through it with you as much as you want. If you need that.”

“She’s good at that,” says Sibby. “One time she lettered me a gorgeous pro/con list about getting a tattoo.”

“I think that’s why I’ve been stalling about the wall. I’m sorry for that, by the way. But I—”

“Lark, it’s completely okay. If that house isn’t your home, we shouldn’t do it.”

“But you could use the money.”

I purse my lips, lower my brows in a look of censure. “We’re not doing that, Lark. We’re friends.” I borrow a line from Cecelia. “You’re more to me than the jobs, okay?”