A memory surfaced, too sweet not to indulge: a summer weekend, not long before Luke and Lisa were married. They’d gone camping in Oregon, because Lisa—a city girl to her core—had never camped before. She wanted an adventure, she’d said. “I want to go to sleep smelling of smoke, with dirt under my fingernails and pine needles in my hair.” So they’d pitched a tent in the Cascades. They hiked long, breathtaking trails and bathed in frigid creeks, and at night they watched the stars outshine the rising embers from their fire. Deep into their third night, Luke had woken to the sound of Lisa’s guitar, and he unzipped the tent to find her sitting fireside with her acoustic across one knee.

“Sounds good,” he’d said, blinking the tiredness from his eyes. “Pretty.”

“Yeah? I just wrote it. Right here, right now.”

“Play it again.”

She did, and maybe it was the high half-moon or the crystal air, but every line had sounded like poetry. “Some dreams are found where the lows don’t go, this is the cradle that rocks my soul.” It was an astral moment, and when she’d finished, Luke—at a time when silence would have been better—had stroked her cheek and said something hopelessly obtuse.

“You can even make a cradle sound soulful.”

“It’s a metaphor,” Lisa had replied. She’d kissed him, and it was bigger than the night. “You are the cradle.”

The memory lingered, accentuated by Luke’s emotion: the stars were fuller, the notes rang clearer, Lisa’s kiss lasted longer. Finally, it faded. The fifties-style soda fountain swam back into being. The stool swiveled beneath Luke as he shifted his weight. He plugged another quarter into the juke and hit a random number. “In the Still of the Night” by the Five Satins started playing. The universe, no doubt, keeping him honest.

“These past three years have been . . . just the worst.” An understatement, and Luke rolled his eyes to indicate as much. “Everything I’ve been through has caused me to hate and doubt myself, and there have been times when I’ve wondered if it’s really Lisa I want back, or everything else: the money, the big house in Sherman Oaks, the career I worked so hard to get off the ground. Or maybe I just want to be exonerated—to give a big ‘fuck you’ to every son of a bitch who dragged my name through the dirt.”

“It’s okay to want all those things,” Kitty said.

“Doesn’t feel like it sometimes.”