All of the rooms in the Hopewell Hotel were called suites, even though they were single rooms, and a suite by definition is a series of rooms. It had always been this way. When the hotel was given its very expensive makeover in 1929, this lie was physically manifested in the form of a hand-engraved brass sign on every door, edged in a Deco lightning-bolt motif.

No one ever complained about the non-suiteness of a Hopewell room. They complained about other things, like broken televisions, or squeaky old bed frames, or the damp in the walls. Or incidents like that time two years ago when a pigeon got into the Sterling Suite when it had been vacant for a while and the window was left open to air the room. The pigeon nested in one of the wall sconces, a fact that remained undiscovered until the guest turned on the light and the enraged pigeon flew out, much like the proverbial bat from hell, and started flapping around the room. Smoke started billowing out of the wall. Within seconds, the Sterling Suite was a scene from a horror film.

When those are your problems, no one gets crazy about semantics.

Everything over the next few days had a similar air of hazy definition and disaster. Whatever had happened was called a wedding, but it didn’t feel like one. Not that Scarlett had any real frame of reference for how weddings were supposed to be. She had never attended one, never developed any particular fascination for them, harbored no particular like or dislike of any kind. But she didn’t think they were supposed to be like this. They weren’t supposed to be secret, unseen events where the aftermath looks a lot like the before except everyone is gloomy and tense all the time, like they’ve just heard that there’s been an outbreak of plague in the town upstream.

Chip and Lola took up temporary residence in the swanky Peninsula Hotel. They made a brief appearance on Sunday afternoon, during which they both looked very stressed-out. Monday arrived just like it always did, creeping in during the night like the neighbor’s cat, come to illicitly drop dead mice by the bedside. Scarlett opened her eyes and saw Lola’s empty bed, instantly remembering what a few hours of sleep had blanked away. She looked at the clock. Six A.M. She had another half hour of sleep to go, but something had woken her.

It was a hand, shaking her very gently. Lola’s hand, specifically. Lola was sitting on the other side of Scarlett’s bed, facing the windows. She had pulled her hair up into a twist so severely that it was pulling at the skin around her face.

“When did you get here?” Scarlett asked groggily.

“A few minutes ago. But we’re all having breakfast together.”

“What, now?”

“Half an hour. You get ready for school. I have to go wake up Marlene.”