“No, really, I’m tone-deaf,” he said, and she made a face as if to signal she didn’t think Ezra was less than wonderful at anything, and so he’d tried Tina Turner’s lyric—We’re all a part of God’s great big family—and he was right. He was truly awful. Frankie didn’t mean to laugh, but honestly, he wasn’t even in the right octave much less the right key, and Ezra cried, “I told you!” and because he was making her smile, he sang the next line too: And the truth, you know, love is all we need. But soon she was laughing so hard she thought she was going to pee in her pants, and when she told him as much through her hiccups, he started laughing too.

Finally, she got a hold of herself and said, “Well, I think if you’re really that terrible at something, the only thing to do is lean into it.” So she unlatched her seat belt and opened up the Jeep’s sunroof, her torso craning out, her cheeks chapped from the cold air, and shouted, “We are the world!” Then she heard Ezra from the driver’s side: “We are the children!” Then together: “We are the ones who make a brighter day, so let’s start giving.” Ezra let Frankie take the high notes as they finished up the chorus. And then Frankie shouted, “This time with feeling, Ezra!” And they did that over and over again, louder each time, until the song ended. And she eased back into the seat and then he pulled over, and they made out on the side of the quiet street peppered with homes flashing green and red Christmas lights until the windows fogged up.

If the song meant anything to Ezra now, he betrayed nothing.

“Really, was I with anyone you can remember?” he said to Joni. “It would be really helpful.”

“I think . . . well . . . there were a few of us regulars at the table. I’m not even sure how you ended up there.”

Frankie heard Cyndi Lauper wail her solo now, and she tried again not to think of that night in Ezra’s Jeep. By then, he had already told her he loved her; he’d done that early on, shortly after he decorated that B and B where they first slept together, because that’s what Ezra did. But when he’d pulled back from kissing her, the heat blasting from his Jeep’s vents, her shirt off, her skin exposed, she surprised herself by laying the rest of herself bare too.

“I love you, Ezra Jones,” she’d said, because it was true and also because she thought it might help soothe him, calm the pulse of anxiety that raced through him because of his sick mom but also because he’d probably been born that way.

“I already know that,” he said, his voice husky and low. Then he kissed her again and took off the rest of her clothes.

Now, Joni’s brow unfurrowed, as if something just came to her. “Wait, you did go on a rant for a few minutes.”