“I think we need to work backward,” he said, once he had settled himself in the chair.

“And I think we should start at the beginning,” Frankie countered, sitting opposite him back at the table.

Ezra sighed. Long. Slow. Exhausted.

“I’m just saying!” she snapped. “I remember being at Lemonhead. The only solid info we have is that you were then at Waverly’s, and we inexplicably slept together at Homer. So why wouldn’t we start at the one place we’re sure of?”

“We didn’t sleep together!” Ezra barked.

“Semantics,” Frankie said.

“Well, what about the rehearsal dinner at Burton?” Ezra lobbed back.

He saw Frankie steel her jaw, and her nostrils flared just a touch, and beyond that, he thought he saw something like recognition. April and Connor had set the dinner in a private room at Burton Library—but there was too much about Burton to unpack right now.

“We will not discuss Burton until we need to. God, do we have to make everything about that afternoon? It was a decade ago!” Frankie said.

“Fine,” Ezra said. “Just fine.”

A concession. And then he realized: yes, he really could always outsmart anyone. Unless, of course, it was Frankie Harriman.

NINE

Frankie

Ezra insisted on checking his answering machine before they headed to Lemonhead, which Joni noted probably wouldn’t even be open yet. Frankie admired her street smarts and wondered what she’d do after graduating. She was half-inclined to offer her a job like someone had done for her: an olive branch, a lifeline, out in LA.

“Maybe Mimi left me a message this morning,” Ezra said, partially to himself, as he punched in his number, then his code. “She’d know that I could fix it.”

Frankie rolled her eyes and thought about how paternal he sounded, and she knew that sounding paternal shouldn’t annoy her but it did all the same. Her own dad was somewhere in the Caribbean with his new girlfriend and certainly unconcerned with Frankie’s holiday itinerary, though he had sent her five hundred dollars for Christmas. Her mom had called and pleaded to meet up in Los Angeles after she and her new husband wrapped up in Cabo, but Frankie had told her she was leaving for Middleton early and concocted dates so her mother wouldn’t push it. Her family was exhausting, and besides, her mom would only needle her about why she was managing half-talented, nubile, partially dressed twenty-three-year-olds rather than pursuing her own musical talents.

And anyway, she was thirty-two now, too old to embark on a new career when being young and having round breasts and flat abs was as important as any sort of talent. And yet, about a year ago, she found herself at home for a whole weekend—no travel, no concerts, no evening plans—and grew wistful about her neglected musicality, like it was a sunflower plant she’d left out to die. Without even thinking about it, she’d driven down Western Avenue to an out-of-the-way haunt where one of her artists picked up collectable guitars, and she bought an upright piano. It wasn’t the grand piano she’d grown up with, but then, a grand was out of the question in her apartment. She paid an extra three hundred dollars for delivery, and then she just sat and stared at it from across the room for the rest of the weekend. She didn’t know what she was thinking. She called to return it but was told it was final sale.