She’s standing in front of a full-sized mirror in Bayard’s late wife’s closet, which is now her closet, although some of Nell’s better clothes—her rabbit-fur coat and Chloé dresses—still hang there in a small, cordoned-off section. Two years ago, Bayard’s rock-climbing, Patagonia-clad daughter in Seattle, Meg, said she wanted to claim her mother’s clothes for herself, although they’d never fit her. She’s stocky like her father. Violet, on the other hand, is tall and slim like Mitch. The dresses would fit Violet perfectly but would look laughable on her, with her shock of purple hair and pierced nose. She has a tattoo with a Buick Riviera tail fin on the back of her neck. She’s used to dealing mostly with men, and it shows. She’s tough and jaded in a way that Sherri never was. Meg disapproves of Violet and Sherri, these ragtag women her father has pulled into his life, although she’s never explicitly said so. Sherri doesn’t take it personally, because Meg wouldn’t want her father to date anyone new, especially someone who, at nearly sixty, still wears stilettos and bodycon dresses.

Nell had been a society wife. She sat on the board at the art museum where Sherri works, which was how Sherri had met Bayard. Nell never missed a fundraiser. She was the kind of woman who didn’t flinch when she spent two thousand dollars on a dress or thirty bucks on a bar of French milled soap. Sherri was a long way from East Troy, but her Midwestern upbringing stays with her. She has a lot more money to her name than Nell ever did, but she suspects Meg thinks she’s a gold digger. Still, she prefers to shop the sale racks. She often thinks about taking all those old dresses to an upscale resale store on Palm Canyon Drive (the drag queens would love them), but that is Bayard’s job. Three years after he’d buried his wife, he still isn’t up to the task. Sherri understands. She hadn’t spent the bulk of her adult life with Arthur—really, she’d only spent just over a week with him. Still, to this day she feels his presence alongside her. She even sleeps on Arthur’s threadbare pillowcase.

Bayard walks into the dressing room, so distracted that her nakedness does nothing for him. The recessed lights bounce off his bald head. Shirtless and tan, he reminds Sherri of Yul Brynner from The King and I. Sherri adores him. “Have you seen my yoga shorts?”

“I don’t keep track of your shit, my dear.” She bet that Nell had never spoken to Bayard like that.

“But they aren’t in my blue bag where I left them.”

“Then you misplaced them.”