“Frankie,” he called. “You still ok out there?”

“Hmmm, yeah, fine,” she called back.

With that, Ezra rebooted the computer into safe mode and typed in a variety of prompts, and soon enough, he was in. He clicked on Netscape, then to American Airlines. If Mimi’s flight had been canceled, surely they could just rebook the ticket. He set up his search terms: Kansas City to Hartford. Chicago to Hartford. Or Boston. He’d even take Boston and send her a car if it meant she could still arrive at Middleton by midnight and he could somehow ascertain that he and Frankie were not wed to each other. And even if they were, he’d wrestle the ring off her finger and assume he could get it annulled and still right things with Mimi. She never even had to know. Who said she had to know? He’d never thought to keep a secret from Mimi, not since the day that they met and discovered they were so alike that secrets were unnecessary. And yet. And yet.

He circled all of these notions as he waited for the search results to load.

He was surprised, when they did, that all the flights were operating on time. Hadn’t Mimi’s voicemail said that hers was canceled because of weather? Wouldn’t that mean, he realized, that she could have just flown out today? Wouldn’t that also mean, he felt himself scowl, that the airline would have put her on the first flight out?

He moved the mouse over to “Flight Status” and typed in yesterday’s date, then pulled up all the flights from Kansas City to Chicago. The dial-up internet was interminably slow, and sure, it could have been that his nervous system was completely out of whack, what with the pepper spray and the morning wake-up and the unwelcome reunion with Frankie Harriman, but part of him already knew why his pulse was racing, why he could feel his mind starting to spin. Over the years, Ezra had learned to listen to his gut, which wasn’t really something he’d fine-tuned at Middleton but later, once he had whittled himself into a bit of a professional poker player, he came to trust it inherently. His gut was rarely wrong.

And then it was in front of him.

Mimi’s flight had landed on time yesterday. But for reasons that eluded him, the woman he was about to propose to simply wasn’t on it.

ELEVEN

Frankie

Frankie needed to get out of Lemonhead, like, yesterday. First, actually, she needed a drink. The quick glimpse she’d seen on the videotape had been alarming—how had she inexplicably ended up back at Lemonhead several hours after her first stopover with Laila, and why was she leaning into Ezra, her head on his shoulder, his arm slung around her waist? Then the start of a memory she had been searching for came to her: there had indeed been a scavenger hunt, and when struck with this lightning bolt, she further remembered that—inexplicably—there had been Polaroid cameras involved, actual proof. Feverishly, with Ezra still in the back office, she dug through her purse once again. There was a zippered pocket inside the middle fold where she often tucked her passport for safekeeping when flying internationally. With everything else going on, she’d overlooked that in Homer. Her fingers grasped exactly what she already knew would be there, and she pulled out a floppy square photograph. Their faces were out of focus, and Ezra was gazing past the camera. But Frankie was turned toward him, not exactly smiling but not exactly not. Behind them, blurry but clear enough to identify, was a swimming pool. Frankie squeezed her eyes shut, willing the rest of the evening to come to her. But there was nothing. She shoved the image back into her purse and jammed the zipper so tight, she nearly pulled the slider off.