“We should probably go back to the wedding,” she said eventually, though neither of them moved.

“So you remembered everything from last night?” Ezra asked.

“I did.”

“And you’ll tell me?”

Frankie linked her hand in his, and they started toward their old friends at their old school with a new start.

“You told me to call you Mr. Harriman,” Frankie said, and Ezra doubled over in laughter. “Because I told you I had to keep my name.”

“I like it,” Ezra said. “I like it very much.”

“But no ring,” Frankie repeated.

Ezra pulled her close to him and kissed the top of her head. “No ring,” he repeated. “Just a dog.”

Frankie looked up at him. “And me.”

“No ring, a dog, and Frankie Harriman,” he said, and Frankie thought he looked happier than she ever could have imagined.

“No ring, a dog, and Ezra Jones,” she said.

It was the twenty-first century now.

The past was behind them and the whole breadth of the world was in front of them. Frankie started to believe that anything was possible. Ezra, she thought, was starting to believe that too. She could be brave enough to leave herself vulnerable; he could be loose enough to trust that they could stumble wherever their road took them. And there was music to be found in that; there was music to be made. A melody, a harmony, a vast grand symphony.

EPILOGUE

Ezra

AUGUST 2000

Ezra was bone-weary when he climbed up the stairs to Frankie’s apartment. The flight out of London had been delayed three hours, and the jet lag was making his legs rubbery, his brain a muddled buzz. Still though, the past three weeks with Henry had been nourishing, the type of time that his therapist would call good for his soul. We only have one family, Ezra kept saying to his brother. We need to be better about this. So Ezra met Henry’s fiancée; Henry met Frankie. He’d greeted her at the airport with a bear hug that Ezra was sure Frankie would flinch from, but Frankie leaned into him too, like she wasn’t afraid of openhearted affection, like she needed it as much as the rest of them.

Henry pulled back and said, “Finally, the infamous Frankie Harriman!” Ezra thought he saw her blush, but then she said, “My reputation precedes me, and I stand by it all.” And then they all laughed because both Henry and Frankie were right: theirs wasn’t the type of history you could shed even when you put it all behind you. And for three weeks, they ate a shit ton of fish and chips; they raised frothy ales in pubs in memory of Ezra and Henry’s mom; they played darts and lingered too long in museums and did all the touristy things that he’d missed out on since he really hadn’t visited in years and Frankie had missed out on because she worked too much. Most important, they remembered that being family, having family, was foundational, not just a footnote to any of their stories.