He figured that if she wanted to see him, she could always contact the restaurant and ask the bartender who had paid for her wine. He held out hope that she would. But months went gone by and she didn’t. Vicki was a ghost.

In reality Joe had a girlfriend now. He hadn’t when he’d met Vicki, but about four months ago he met Sarah and had been seeing her regularly ever since. She was a concierge at the Wynn. She’d studied hotel management at Cornell and was on track to make her way up to the front office. She was thirty-one, a pretty redhead from a good family. But Joe figured that, because of their age difference, their relationship was most likely temporary. Recently—as in a week before Bee’s wedding—she’d turned to him and asked whether he was opposed to more children. He didn’t have an answer.

“Let’s table this until I get back from Maryland,” Joe had told her, kissing her forehead.

He’d considered bringing Sarah to the wedding, but he didn’t want to send the wrong message to her about his level of commitment. Now in his midforties, he wasn’t sure that he could remain in a relationship with someone so interested in starting a family. And, frankly, he didn’t want Sarah to go to Maryland and see how his brother’s family treated him. Around Sarah, Joe was the grown-up. But in Maryland, around Richard and Donna, Joe was a screwup. He was Peter Pan. Joe didn’t want anyone from his Vegas world to see how he looked through his brother’s and sister-in-law’s eyes.

After parking his rental car in the small lot behind the quiet inn, Joe waited in line to get his key. The small brick building disoriented him. He was used to big lights and sleek, flashy hotel interiors. This place was the definition of nautical quaint, with brown leather chairs and prints of waves and ships hanging from exposed-brick and wooden walls. In front of him were a few businessmen, a couple who looked familiar—maybe his own second cousins—and a woman at the front of the line who had a guitar case strapped to her back. As she walked away from the wooden desk, her key in hand, Joe couldn’t stop himself jumping out of line to bother her. He was a sucker for women and instruments, especially when they wore leather jackets. They made him think of Lita Ford—a poster of her had hung in his childhood bedroom.

Joe took a few quick steps, following the woman as she moved to the elevator.

He yelled at her backside, “Do you play?”

The young woman whipped around, almost knocking Joe in the face with the guitar case. Usually musicians are more careful with their instruments, he thought.

“Yes,” she said, forcing a thin smile.

Joe felt his palms become damp. This woman was beautiful, he thought. And her hair, while shoulder length, was just like Vicki’s had been, wispy and jet black. Unlike Vicki, whose hair matched her dark Asian eyes and muted olive skin color, this woman’s complexion reminded him of Snow White’s. Her opaque, messy bob fell against almost translucent ivory skin. She didn’t wear makeup, and her lips looked cold and purple. Joe quickly shamed himself by wondering what this woman might look like if she cut her hair to Tinker Bell length, so she better resembled Vicki from Reno. This woman was as close as he could get to the real thing. He pictured what she would look like naked and wondered if she would mind if he called her Vicki. He concentrated on remaining calm and trying not to turn red.