Mimi’s face froze and then crumbled, and she sank back on the windowsill. “Kmart? This is about Kmart?”

And at this Bruno said, “As intriguing as this is, I’m gonna need you to keep your voice down. This is still a library, miss.”

And she turned to him and bleated, “It is New Year’s Eve and we are the only ones here, so please forgive me!”

And now Ezra was truly mortified. “Mimi, please,” he whispered. “Please, let’s just sit calmly and talk about this.”

“Talk about what?” she cried. “Kmart? That, like, your friend ‘Gregory,’ ”—she said that like it wasn’t really his name, which Ezra really did not understand—“saw me taking, like, a lipstick. A lipstick! Who cares? It’s Kmart; they have a billion dollars, and I do not!”

“I’m not upset about Kmart,” Ezra said.

“Then maybe we should talk about Frankie!” Mimi said, and Ezra saw Bruno cock his head like this was getting interesting. “What ever happened to loyalty? What ever happened to honesty?”

Ezra knew she was deflecting because it was easier to point fingers than be pointed out. He’d never taken the bar, but he’d been to law school, and he recognized the technique. He breathed in, breathed out. Did it one more time. He could do this on his own. He didn’t need Frankie there to calm him.

“Mimi, this is about honesty, actually. Just tell me why you didn’t get on your flight,” he said. “It’s a simple question with a simple answer.”

Mimi was truly beside herself now. Her cheeks were raging red, her nose dripping, and she was practically levitating with indignation. She reminded Ezra of a cornered animal who was willing to lash out at anything, anyone, even those who meant it no harm.

“Fine! Fine! I didn’t get on the flight because I missed it, ok?”

Ezra felt his stomach unwind. That was reasonable. That was believable! Then it occurred to him that if the explanation were simply this innocuous, she would have told him. And in the past, he realized, he would have accepted such things: that she’d answered his question, and even if something about it didn’t sit quite right, he didn’t want to peel back any other layers because he intuitively knew that he wouldn’t like what he’d find. He thought again of Frankie, how when she’d told him she was pregnant, he’d started making plans. Maybe he should have peeled back some of her layers. Maybe then he’d have seen the whole of her, and even if it had been ugly, uglier, he could have loved that part of her too. He would have, he knew now, watching Mimi. He would have loved the whole of it, the whole of her.

“If you just missed your flight, why didn’t you tell me?” Now, even if it meant confrontation, even if it meant saying difficult things, he wanted to know the truth. He was keenly aware of how profoundly different this was for him, how profoundly new.