The mention of Thai food, of course, brought up memories of our canceled plans the week before. An awkward silence settled in as we took off again. I wondered if he still wanted to eat in bed.

I turned on the radio.

The two hosts of a show were talking about Strena’s performance. I quickly changed the station.

“Don’t you want to hear the critics?”

“What if they say it was sublime except for that one short dumpling-looking chick?”

“Dumpling?”

“My father’s nickname for me. In high school, it made me want to take a bubble bath with a toaster, but I’ve embraced the truth since. I’m loosely in the dumpling category. Not a giant Chinese soup dumpling, but definitely a few sizes above gnocchi. People who spend half their life in their office chair and the other half at champagne receptions don’t generally have an athlete’s body.” The words just poured right out of me.

“When the lights came on and I saw you, I almost choked to death,” Bram said. “Nearly as bad as when you opened the door in a T-shirt without a bra the morning after we met.”

I covered my face. “You noticed that?”

“Do I have a Y chromosome?”

I twisted to the side window and considered jumping from the moving car. “I was hoping that you missed that.”

“I was pretending hard.” He gave a strangled laugh. “At least I had that as training for today. It takes skill to look an art connoisseur when you feel like…”

I waited for him to finish. When he just shook his head, for some weird, suicidal reason, I asked, “How close were you sitting to the stage?”

“Thirty feet? I couldn’t have handled any closer.” Bram navigated traffic, silent for a few seconds before he asked, “Are you going to do it again?”

“No,” I said on reflex, then thought about it. “All my life, I wanted to be like Violet, free and wild, but somehow, I ended up like my mother. Practical, methodological, crossing my t’s and dotting my i’s.”

“All good traits for a business owner.”

“I want to take more chances.”

“You’re running away to join the Carnival in Rio?”

“That’s the other extreme. I think balance is the key.”

“So that’s a definite no on another naked show?”

His overexaggerated disappointment made me smile. A long string of nooooos was on my tongue, but my phone pinged with a text. “My mom. Wants to know if I’m finished with the house yet.”

I texted back. Almost. Then I added, Do you know who owned Violet’s house before her father?

His father. Albert. Why?

Just checking out stg. And before him?

Nobody. He had the house built for his wife.

“Everything okay?” Bram asked.

I gave an absentminded nod, my mind on the mysteries of the past. And it stayed there for the rest of the drive.