“I like having time to read a novel. Not that I don’t want to read New England Journal of Medicine, too. I don’t know, I guess I’m thinking about balance these days. Where to find it. If it’s supposed to exist in a single day or over the course of a lifetime.”

“I’ve never been very good at balance.”

“I know.”

“But I do have an idea how you could read more—or, rather, where you could read more.”

“Where?”

“Hang on a second.” Zanne wiped her hands off and picked up the phone sitting on the conference table next to her plate, primed to alert her in case Ted needed something. She flicked away a notification from the events team. Rio had come through with five tall fedoras; he’d bring them with him, and the swings could color-match later. Good. Zanne navigated to the listing for the house in Mar Vista and handed the phone to Gaby. “Here.”

Gaby looked at it. She swiped up with her thumb, scrolling down—much too quickly—through the photos of the little house, the morning glories in the kitchen, the postage-stamp yard in back where Zanne pictured a couple of deck chairs going.

Gaby passed the phone back. “I don’t get it.”

“With the raise I’m getting, I can finally afford to buy a house.”

Gaby’s shoulders hunched and her eyebrows and lips stretched in opposite directions, as if Zanne had asked her to choke her. If that’s your kink. “I didn’t know you wanted that.”

“You’re the one who’s been telling me I need to get out of that crappy apartment.”

“Yeah, but if you have a mortgage, then how can you ever leave this place? Have you thought about how much longer you’ll stay?”

Now it was Gaby’s turn to wait for an answer. She took a sip of water and sat back in her chair. Suddenly Zanne felt eighteen again, her father and stepmother grilling her at the dining table in Braintree after she’d told them she was going to Los Angeles instead of Boston College where Noah taught, where her half sisters had gone tuition-free and Zanne could, too. They thought the whole plan of hers to go it alone in Hollywood was idiotic, not just a pipe dream but a contortion, born of a completely unnecessary insistence on financial separation from them. But she had to get out of that house. They didn’t get it, and now neither did Gaby. But Zanne could forgive her. Gaby was only twenty-two and still the apple of her parents’ eyes. She’d gone straight from their house to college to Zanne’s apartment. She’d never been on her own.

“I’ll stay until it stops making sense,” Zanne said. She grabbed both their plates, and opened the conference room door for Gaby. “Come on.”

“Where are we going?”