Begrudgingly, Graham sat down behind the wheel. As he backed out, Lauren glanced once more at the Silver Swans building, then at Matthew’s reflection in the little baby mirror affixed to the back seat. “How was it?” she cooed to him. “Did you like your teachers?”

Matthew answered by waggling a Mickey Mouse rattle. The kid was Mickey obsessed—when he was upset, no other blanket, stuffed animal, or song would do.

Then Lauren looked at Graham, realizing something. “How did you know the director’s name was Piper?”

Graham kept his eyes on the road. “Because we’ve had whole conversations about her. You read me her biography. You don’t remember?”

Lauren felt a swoop in her chest. “Did I?”

“Just yesterday, hun.” Graham tapped her temple good-naturedly. “Mom brain!”

Lauren hated the term mom brain, but maybe it was accurate. Things were slipping past her far more often since she’d given birth. This particular memory, the deep dive into Piper Jovan—it felt ephemeral, like it had only happened in a dream. But how else did she know Piper had been at Silver Swans for five years, that she’d won awards, and that she had a son?

As he was taking the turnoff to a busier road, Graham’s phone pinged, and he glanced quickly at the screen. “Oh, shit. Gracie wants me to come in today after all.”

Lauren felt her stomach dip. “Ugh. Are you serious?”

Gracie Lord was Graham’s quasi-new boss, the female show runner of the hit network comedy Ketchup, which shot in Los Angeles. When Lauren and Graham met two years ago, when they were both living in Silver Lake, Graham was an aspiring screenwriter with a degree in the craft from UCLA, picking up bartending shifts to make ends meet. He’d charmed Lauren from behind the bar at her regular dinner haunt up the street. He was witty and confident and good-looking with his height and deep-set eyes and scruffy beard, the kind of guy she figured would go for a young, blond, dime-a-dozen LA stereotype, and Lauren had been flattered that he’d chosen her: four inches too short, about fifteen pounds heavier than the city’s median, and thirty-eight years old.

Graham always said she was beautiful. And that he loved her because she was smart, and honest, and made bold decisions. He loved her always-laughing family from Massachusetts, how her childhood was all about homemade granola bars and a tangle of shoes in the front foyer and her mother penning a chore schedule Sunday night. “It’s like a seventies sitcom,” he said wistfully. Graham had grown up with a single mother in a little town in central California; his extended family were bone-dry, serious Evangelical Christians whose interests and values were alien to him.