Pam sighed. “Yes, our interfering father. He saw me and Jason outside the building when he came to visit. We were kissing. This was right before Christmas. Of course, he was full of righteous indignation. He swore to me that he would tell you about the affair if I didn’t stop. When we were hiking that morning by the ocean, he wouldn’t let it go. He kept lecturing me about ruining my sister’s life. I didn’t care about that, to be honest, but he said he would cut me out of his will, too, and I knew he was serious. I wasn’t going to let that happen.”

Frankie could see them on the cliff’s edge. Arguing.

She could see Pam’s hands on his chest.

She could see him fall.

“You saw us,” Pam went on. “You’d gotten ahead of us, but you turned back while we were arguing, and you saw us. I begged you to forget it. I said it was an accident, that I got angry over all those years of emotional abuse, that I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. You believed me. You may be a psychiatrist, but you fell for my poor, poor pitiful me act. So you asked Jason to wipe it all away.”

Frankie stood up from the table. Her legs barely supported her, but she didn’t want her sister to see her trembling.

“I want you out,” Frankie told Pam. “You have twenty-four hours to get everything out of my place. Take Jason with you. I never want to see either of you again.”

Pam raised her glass in a toast and picked up a menu. “Whatever you say.”

Frankie wanted to do something. Slap her. Hit her. Throw the champagne in her face. But she didn’t. She stalked from the restaurant onto the street, and when she was on her own, beyond the view of the windows, she finally broke down. Tears welled up and poured from her eyes. She fell against the wall and beat her fists against the stone. People stopped and offered help, and she waved them away. She wailed, even though she didn’t even know what she was crying for. In the end, she felt nothing. She was dead inside.

A text tone sounded on her phone. She wondered if it was Jason. Or Pam. What could they say to her now?

Instead, it was from Frost Easton.

I’m here.

Frankie composed herself. She wiped her face as best she could and hugged herself against the chill as she headed toward Union Square. It was dark. The lights of the city didn’t lift her heart. The shadows felt ominous, and the mounds of the homeless under blankets in the doorways depressed her. Right now, she wanted to be anywhere but here. She wanted to leave the city and never look back.