Ezra slowed as he passed Burton Library, but even with his relentless optimism, he couldn’t ignore that his stomach curled at the notion of going in: he was wise enough to know that something had probably happened there last night, because you almost always inevitably return to the scene of the crime, and this was where he had been robbed of Frankie. No, he wasn’t robbed of her. He was freed from her. He didn’t even know why he thought of it in those terms in the first place.

Screw it. He doubled back abruptly and scaled the library steps two by two, his back barking, but nothing was going to stop him now. Face your demons head-on, that’s really how you free yourself. His mom had said something along those lines when it became clear she was dying, and Henry had moved to London for work, and so it really was just the two of them and the grief of knowing that time was finite. She was wisp-thin and had nothing more than downy hair by then, but she took his cheeks in her frail hands and told him: Don’t shy away from the darker corners, love. Life is hard. Face it anyway. He was trying but suspected he wasn’t quite there.

He swung the door open, and the first thing he noticed was the smell. How a decade had passed, and it still smelled exactly the same. Like floor wax and old books and a faint note of burned coffee because somewhere sometime enough students had spilled their to-go cups here and there that the scent stuck. Ezra stood in the open foyer with its marbled floors and its rotunda ceiling, and for the first time all morning, he allowed himself to breathe.

A security guard sat at a desk about ten feet away and glanced his sleepy eyes upward.

“ID?” he asked.

“Oh,” Ezra said. “I’m not a student. I mean, I was but—”

“Visitors’ passes have to go through the alumni office.” He flipped over his wrist and checked his watch. “But it closes in fifteen minutes. So.”

“Can’t I . . .” Ezra put on his most pleasant face, the one he used to woo investors, the one he wore at all of those ridiculous events with Mimi where he was shuttled to the front of the crowd and made an example of. (In the best of ways, Mimi thought. Who wouldn’t want to be us? she always said.) “I was here last night. I think. For a dinner? I may have dropped my phone.” Ezra flashed a grin, which almost always worked. “I’ll be in and out.”

The guard squinted. “I worked last night. I don’t remember anyone complaining about a lost phone.”

“Right,” Ezra said, relaxing. Finally! He found someone who could be helpful. “I only just realized this morning.”

The guard had already lost interest. “Lost and found is closed.”

“Yes, sure, but if I could just have five minutes.”

“Visitors’ pass required.” He shrugged like he didn’t make the rules but was more than happy to refuse to bend them.