“Well, Edward’s never had much use—or need, I might add—for practicality,” Gemma continues. “In case you hadn’t gathered this, his family is minted on the British and the Porteño side. He ostensibly works for the family biz but can more or less come and go as he pleases. I’m not sure he’s even bothering with the ruse of work at the moment. Other than his artistic patronage. Edward never stays anywhere long enough for moss to grow, let alone roots to take hold. In that, Buenos Aires suits him perfectly: we’re all on the run from something here.”

I nod. “My friends back home are all so tight-knit. I didn’t want people to feel like they had to take sides.” This is true, I didn’t want people to choose sides, mostly because I knew they’d choose Luke. Who wouldn’t? Luke is still the golden boy, whereas I’m no one now. I realize that without the additional context, disappearing into a foreign country following a breakup seems dramatic. But for all they know, I’m a big old drama queen and this is just the sort of thing I do. Maybe I am now. Maybe that’s who Liz is.

“What about the other one, the brother?” Cali asks. I can’t help but smile when I think of him. He’d been so much braver in the end. I see him so clearly now, now that it’s all too late.

“Blair. We’re still friends. But he doesn’t know I’m here. I told my parents where I was going, that’s about it,” I say.

“There’s more to that story,” Gemma says knowingly, “and we’ll get it out of you eventually.”

Penny Is Having a Baby

THEY WERE always so focused on Katie, they must not have seen it.

She really was probably neglected.

Something must have happened to her when she was a kid.

I don’t pretend to know the shape or the depths of what went wrong with Penny, but I do know that it’s not my parents’ fault. I think anyone close to us knows this too. The public is a different matter. People need there to be a root cause, some defining incident or an entire brutal history that drove Penny to do what she did. If there’s nothing to pin it on, if Penny is just a random aberration, it means it could happen to anyone. It means that their daughters or sisters might also grow up to be monsters.