“I’m an only child.”

“I never knew of a sister,” he said.

“Because there isn’t one.”

“This is extraordinary.”

“What is?”

She was too young. He saw that now. A decade too young, but otherwise a dead ringer.

“You’re too young,” he said, though he didn’t mean to express that thought aloud.

She sipped her wine and propped an elbow on the bar and cupped her chin in her hand, exactly as Emily had done, and studied him for a long moment. “This has become a much better pickup pitch. It was so lame at the start. ‘Where have you been all my life?’”

“It was ‘Where have you been all these years?’”

“Whatever. But you’ve polished it up considerably in subsequent drafts, adding a nice note of mystery.”

He felt disoriented. As if he’d been folded into some universe parallel to the one in which he’d been born. “Ten years. She was twenty-five when I last saw her.”

“I’m twenty-five.”

“But you’re not Emily.”

“I’m glad we finally agree on that.”

He didn’t remember finishing his wine, but his glass was empty. “No two people, unrelated, could look so alike. You must have an older sister you don’t know about.” He took his smartphone from a jacket pocket. “May I take your picture?”

“That’s all you want of me—a picture?”

That question left him nonplussed.

She said, “What about your younger brother?”

“I don’t have a brother, younger or otherwise.”

“Too bad. He might have taken me home by now.”

“You’re playing with me. Just like she did.”

“‘She’ being the fabled Emily, I suppose.”

“You wouldn’t go home with me if I asked. She wasn’t that easy, and neither are you.”

Maddison shrugged. “As though you know me. If all you want is a picture, go ahead and take it.”

He took three. “What’s your last name?”

“Sutton. Maddison Sutton.” As he put the phone away, she said, “Now what?”

He wasn’t smooth at this, not these days, not since Emily. He said, “There is an age difference.”

“Good grief, you’re just thirtysomething.”

“Thirty-seven.”

“I’ll call you Grandpa, you can call me Lolita.”

“Okay, it’s not a millennium. Will you have dinner with me?”

“I just finished dinner. So did you.”

“Tomorrow night.”

“I’m free,” she said.

“Is this place all right?”

“It’s delightfully expensive.”

“I’ll pick you up at five thirty.”

“Let’s take it slow. I’ll meet you here.”

“A moment ago, you were ready to go home with me.”

“Not with you,” she said. “With your brother.”

Although unnerved by her resemblance to Emily, he nevertheless laughed. “Fortunately for me, I’m an only child.”

“So you say. Most likely, your brother’s cuter.”

“You even talk like her.”

“Which is how?”

“Always half a step ahead of me.”

“Do you like that?”

“I guess I must.”