“Yes, so I’m uniquely qualified to pass judgment on their parties. They’re terrible.” He swung his arm around her as they walked, and she let her body relax against his.

“She’s freaking out, a little. She doesn’t think I really need to go. But someone needs to help my cousin Hannah mediate all the cousins. Plus, my parents,” she added, grimacing. “And I need to do it, for Cass. It’s important.”

“Well, I do love sitting shiva,” Cole said. “I could eat a hundred hard-boiled eggs. I’m basically Gaston. And, if need be, I can always kill your dad for you.” He shrugged, as if he were joking, though Miriam knew he probably wasn’t. Underneath the yacht bro exterior was a hacker with a feral sense of loyalty to the people he considered his, one that could sometimes supersede his morals. The only reason he hadn’t already wreaked havoc with her dad’s identity was that Miriam had asked him not to.

On the plane, Miriam toyed with the corner of her drink napkin. When Cass was younger and still traveled the world, she would jot down little letters, sketches, and observations. Cass wrote in sharp, uppercase letters of various sizes, with unexpected capitalizations and a great number of exclamation points. She would tuck the napkins into cheesy cards and send them to Miriam from Kathmandu and St. Petersburg and Cairo. Miriam had a box full of them under her bed.

After Miriam stopped coming to Carrigan’s, Cass’s napkins kept arriving. When Miriam least expected it, an envelope would arrive filled with cutting observations and cynical but loving gossip. She checked her purse for a pen, thinking she would do a drawing to keep up the tradition.

Instead, Cole’s conversation sucked her in.

Cole was not an introvert. He’d been known to opine that introverts do not exist. He had trouble understanding that other human beings did not, necessarily, want the gift of his running commentary on the world around him. Miriam found him oddly calming to tune out to.

He was giving their poor, polite seatmate a monologue, describing Carrigan’s with the zeal of a promotional brochure, only not quite accurately, having never been there.

“Mimi’s aunt bought the farm with money she inherited from her father, who started a greengrocer business from nothing as a Polish immigrant. She was some sort of scandalous vaudeville dancer in the twenties and her family cut her off, so to piss them off she bought a Christmas tree farm!” He clasped his hands to his heart as he said this, as if it were the most delightful thing imaginable.