The car pulled to a stop in front of the apartment building in Murray Hill. “This it?” the driver asked, turning around to look at me, and I nodded. My dad had insisted on getting me a car service to take me home to Connecticut. I’d used them sometimes with him, or when my mom and I went to the airport, but I’d never been in one before, just me. The driver looked like he was in his mid-twenties, and cute, with dark hair sharply parted. He was wearing a suit and seemed to be taking his job very seriously. He’d already called me ma’am three times, and the drive hadn’t been all that long.

“Yeah,” I said, unbuckling my seat belt and reaching for the door handle. “You’re—it’s okay for you to wait, right?”

“Of course, ma’am,” he said easily. “Take as much time as you need.”

I nodded at him. “Okay, I’ll be right back.” I opened the car door, then stepped out onto Thirty-Seventh Street, looking up at Mallory’s brownstone.

After my dad and I had talked, he’d gone into his room for about ten minutes, while Joy poured me a glass of mint tea and showed me pictures from their most recent antiquing trip and I pretended to be interested in Vermont. Joy was never going to be my favorite person, but maybe she didn’t have to be. She was horrified when she learned what Mallory had done, and had left her daughter a voice mail that made me resolve never to get on her bad side. But I knew that she was also getting mad on my behalf, which secretly made me feel good.

When my dad came back, he was holding his calendar, and his eyes were red, something neither of us mentioned as we sat down with our schedules and figured it out—specific times that we could spend together. I told him I didn’t mind if some of our time was with Matty or Margaux (or Mallory, too, though this was less appealing to me. Though I did want to see Brad again, and if that was how it had to happen, I could accept those terms), but I wanted some time with just him—and it seemed he wanted the same thing.