She had already texted him this morning.

When are you coming?

He’d apologized for his tardiness, blamed traffic, though he hadn’t even left, suggested they could have dinner and talk.

Dinner? I was hoping for lunch.

He would see what he could do, he’d promised, depositing his weekend bag and a cooler full of hummus and marinated tofu into the trunk of the Mercedes. As he was climbing into the front seat, his phone buzzed with her response.

What if Violet texts me? What should I say?

His daughter had left last night, gone to stay with a friend—Sarah? Or Sonja? Gabe couldn’t recall. When he’d returned from dropping Natalie at the bus, all the guests were gone. And so was his daughter.

“Violet’s upset,” his wife explained, her voice weary, her face haggard. “This was supposed to be a celebration, and it turned into a fiasco.”

Was there something pointed in his spouse’s tone? A hint of accusation, perhaps? No, he was being paranoid. There was no way Celeste could know that Violet’s girl-crush had been Gabe’s lover. Because, if Celeste had known, there would be no subtle jab, no annoyed insinuation. His wife would have exploded. She would have confronted him, raged at him, and then divorced him. She could never find out.

“She’s gone to Sonja’s,” Celeste continued. “I wanted her to stay home, to talk about how she’s feeling, but she said she wanted to be with her friends.”

“It’s normal,” Gabe assured her, “they get off on drama at this age.”

He, too, would have preferred his daughter remain under the same roof, so he could keep an eye on her. And on her phone. He had no way of knowing if Violet had reached out to Natalie. But Natalie’s recent text asking his advice on how to respond to a potential message from Violet indicated that his lover had not heard from the younger girl. Not yet, anyway. So he responded to her:

Tell Violet you’re sick, tell her you need space, tell her you’re not interested.

I’m coming.

And then he hopped in his car and sped off.

Near Bridgehampton, he pulled over to get gas. As he filled the tank, he scanned his phone, saw a slew of texts from Natalie.

Where are you?

You must be driving. Drive safe

Can’t wait to see you xoxoxo

God, the girl was so needy, so clingy, so obsessed.

Hopping back in the Mercedes, he muted his phone and dropped it into the console. Soon, he merged onto the Long Island Expressway and hurtled toward the Bronx Zoo. He was meeting the man, the handler of problems, there at two thirty. The location had been Gabe’s idea. It was easily accessible off his route to the Upper East Side and, on the slim chance that he was spotted, he could blame his presence on nostalgia. He and Celeste had taken Violet to the zoo when she was little, when they’d all lived together in the city. Now, his girl was graduating, launching into her adult life. It was completely normal for a father to revisit the childhood haunt.