They headed upstairs to collect their things. She realized that, astonishingly, Sylvie was still sleeping. Midway up the stairs, she looked down and saw Arman and Kiki locked in obvious disagreement. She followed Matthew into the bedroom and silently gathered their belongings. Matthew stood in the middle of the room, opening and closing his hands as if they’d fallen asleep. On the way downstairs, Sarah abruptly sat on a step and Matthew joined her. She buried her face in his shoulder.

Their duffel bags tumbled down the staircase.

“What happened?” cried Kiki.

“It’s okay.” Matthew sounded as if he were broken and his voice could no longer hide this fact.

Arman picked up the duffels and brought them to the threshold. He dropped the bags but stood there, as if he was considering opening the door and heading out himself.

Kiki walked over and looked up at Sarah and Matthew. Kiki sat on the bottom step, facing the front door. It seemed as though she might go talk to Arman. But when she finally spoke, it was quietly and it wasn’t to him. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on with Leda?”

“She’s a drug addict,” Sarah said to the back of Kiki’s head. “Heroin.”

Kiki looked up to face them and burst into tears. She put her face in her hands. From their vantage they could see, under the gray cotton garment that she’d barely removed all weekend that somehow worked equally well as a nightgown or party dress—the rise and fall of Kiki’s narrow back.

“It’s okay,” said Matthew, though it was not it was not it was not. “She’s sober now.”

“Fuck,” said Arman, coming over and leaning on the balustrade. “Fuck. But she’s okay?”

“She cut off contact with us,” said Sarah, her eyes fixed on the tar-black-painted stairs.

In the lobby of a Scottsdale hotel she’d recognized a fellow visitor to the rehab facility. They’d given each other weary smiles and started talking. The woman was young and slight. She wore a delicate heart necklace. Her ex-marine husband had gotten hooked after returning from Afghanistan. It’s lucky your daughter never started in with the black tar.

The words lucky. Black tar.

“But,” asked Kiki, “her birthday? And the boat?”

She had to know the answer by the silence that followed. She’d wanted the missing piece and now she had it.

“Four years ago,” Sarah finally said, “after she’d been sober for a little more than a year, she left on a yoga retreat. When she didn’t return our calls or e-mails, we hired a private investigator, who eventually figured out that the yoga retreat was connected to some kind of empowerment project in Pasadena, run by a couple who’d been investigated by the FBI years before when they’d run a similar program in Florida.”