Ezra knew he had struck a nerve outside Steinway Auditorium, but he decided that Frankie had a point: Why did he care if she was playing piano again or not? Why did he care what her skeletons were? He knew why he did, actually: because when he watched her at the piano from the back row of the auditorium, he had seen a sort of release, an awakening, and it stirred something in him that he wasn’t even aware he could feel. Unbridled joy. Total liberation. He could close his eyes and listen to her genius and tap into something that felt like freedom from everything else—his mom, his anxiety, her prognosis. Ezra hadn’t expected that, from music, much less her music, which he hadn’t even known about. Later, he’d discover this same hypnotic calm behind a hand of cards, but at Middleton, standing in the shadows of Steinway, listening to her brilliance, well, that was the closest he’d come to out-of-body serenity in a long time. But still, he reminded himself now, her decision to abandon her musicality wasn’t his problem. He wasn’t her therapist. He wasn’t her boyfriend. They weren’t even friends. They were friends once, even before they fell in love, but that’s not the kind of thing you can return to after you’ve so deeply drawn blood.

He fiddled with the gold band on the ring finger of his left hand, which was jammed into the pocket of his North Face jacket, and he assured himself there must be a reasonable explanation for why they appeared to be married. Maybe it had been a fun game that April and Connor had set up last night. Maybe it had been some sort of joke. Could Alec Barstow really have married them? Ezra didn’t even remember seeing Alec last night, though this was not particularly soothing because he remembered nothing at all.

By now, they’d crossed the street and wrestled with the door, which was padlocked shut. He’d tried the keys, but that would have been just too easy, and predictably, none of them worked. He pressed his forehead to the glass window and tried to peer in, but there was nothing to see, so then he stepped back and tipped his head back toward the sky and screamed, “FUUUUUUCK!” He knew it was a mistake to come here first. Why would this bar be open at eleven o’clock in the morning? Why didn’t he push back harder against her stupid plan when he was the problem solver among the two of them?

“There’s a back entrance,” Frankie said.

He brushed snow off his hair and stared at her. “Frankie, can we—”

“Just come on,” she said, and flagged him around the side of the building. Ezra started to argue, but she’d already vanished around the corner.

Obviously, the back door was locked as well. Frankie tugged the handle and grunted for about ten seconds, but surely even she knew she was no match for the dead bolt. Ezra watched her glance around, wondering if she’d concede defeat.