“And—oh, that’s right—you cheated on me.” Noah smiled, but it was malicious, and pointed at Doyle. “With him. The guy you’re apparently now living with, even though you wouldn’t move in with me until we got engaged.”

“All right,” Doyle interrupted. He took Larkin by the elbow and gently steered him away while saying to Noah, “I think you need to take a breath—”

“Spare me the condescending attitude,” Noah spat.

“I can’t do this,” Larkin said, heading toward the bathroom.

Doyle said to Noah, “I think you should go.”

“I came to talk to my husband, not you.”

“Be that as it may, you’re in my home, and I’m telling you to leave. Evie, hang on—Noah, I’ll ask if he can give you a call—”

Larkin shut the bathroom door, twisted the lock, and opened the medicine cabinet. He pushed Noah’s and Doyle’s voices out of his mind until they were muted, distorted, like he was listening to underwater recordings. The Xanax was still gone, of course, and there was no convenient way to get downstairs and retrieve the pills hidden in the Audi. So Larkin grabbed the ZzzQuil bottle, unscrewed the top, tossed aside the measuring cap, and brought it to his lips. He swallowed a mouthful of the berry-flavored medication, but it burned his sinuses, his throat, and he started coughing. Larkin scrambled to set the bottle on the edge of the sink, but it tipped over, purple antihistamine sloshing down the drain. He turned on the water, leaned down, and drank before coughing some more. It was only after Larkin had caught his breath that he registered the pounding on the door.

“Evie, open the door,” Doyle ordered.

Larkin shut off the tap. He wiped his mouth. A cold sweat had broken out across his chest, his back, his underarms. His stomach twisted, and Larkin wondered if he was going to be sick. He leaned back against the sink, wrapped his arms around himself, and hunched forward.

“Answer me right now, or I’m unscrewing the doorknob.”

Larkin slowly slid into a crouch against the sink cabinet. He drew his knees to his chest and started sobbing. “I can’t do this anymore,” he said again. “I can’t—I can’t live like this. I hate remembering useless, pointless information and forgetting what matters to everyone else. Who cares that the third button on Noah’s shirt had a stray thread and is coming loose? I mean, that’s what I focused on? Who the fuck cares! People think my memory is a gift, but I’m sitting on the bathroom floor and I can’t stop crying and I miss Patrick and I miss Noah and I hate who I’ve become.”

On the other side of the door, near the floor, like Doyle had sat down, he said, “I don’t hate who you are.”