“Man down,” Frankie said to no one.

Old patterns, familiar habits, a warning. All of it surprised her, even though none of it should.

EIGHT

Ezra

Ezra found himself staring at the stucco on the ceiling, inexplicably flattened against the rustic wood floor of the coffee shop. He had no memory of why he was down there; he had no memory of how he got down there.

Frankie’s face moved into his frame, then hovered.

“Ezra, come on, you have to get control of yourself.” She paused. “It’s after ten o’clock already. Pictures are in six hours at the chapel, and Laila threatened my life if I’m not on time.”

Frankie always ran late. He’d forgotten about that. He could tell that she was trying to be patient, but she’d never much been one for patience. He shifted his eyes from hers back to the ceiling. A refusal.

Then Joni, the barista, spoke up.

“Should I call someone? Like, 911?” He watched her gaze move from him to Frankie then back to him. “Campus is pretty dead, but someone could come? I know they have some patrols in case of Y2K.”

“Y2K is really not a thing.” Frankie scoffed. “Also, he does this occasionally.”

Ezra wanted to state that he hadn’t, frankly, had a panic attack in ten years—coincidentally, since Frankie Harriman exited his life—not even when his mom died, because at least he’d steeled himself for that.

“You’re a sweet wife,” Joni said, and Ezra’s panic went straight through the roof again.

“No, we’re not really . . .” Frankie started.

“No,” Ezra managed, cutting her off. “No. I had a plan.”

“His brain works too quickly,” Frankie explained to Joni, as if he weren’t there. “And then, sometimes, it just stops. Like being on a treadmill, you know? It just stops suddenly, and you’re flattened on the ground behind it.” She looked down at Ezra and pointed. “That’s his brain. And that’s probably what happened last night—he just got too caught up in the moment, went blank.”

Ezra stared at the ceiling and thought of the time when, shortly after Frankie had come home with him the first time for Christmas of their junior year, his mother called him in his third-floor dorm room to tell him that they’d found lesions on her liver. How Frankie had lumbered to his room from a skating lesson at Abel, how her cheeks were pink and she was bubbling about a spin she’d managed to master—just one rotation, but still, she’d said—when she noticed he was catatonic on the floor. How she sat with him and sang “Summer of ’69” to distract him, which she said they were playing at the rink, and how her voice sounded like a miracle. How she kept going until he was ready to ease into sitting. Then she kissed his cheeks and pulled him to his feet and suggested they break into the pool at the athletic center because she thought he needed to be reckless for a night, to be anyone other than Responsible Ezra Jones With a Very Sick Mom. He was surprised, back then, that he agreed, and he was further surprised by how much it had helped, even if for just a few hours.