For G’s birthday present, Joey had splurged on a treatment that yielded baby-soft feet after sloughing off all the old skin, along with a Botox-in-a-jar face mask. Since leaving her legal career on the precipice of partnership, Joey hadn’t so much as purchased a new eye shadow—a striking contrast with her ten years in Manhattan, where she’d frequented Barneys like others did bodegas. But G deserved a special present. They’d tried the face mask after G’s birthday party, and G had pooh-poohed its actually working until after, when she’d exclaimed that she looked seventy again.

As Joey slipped on her nude studded sandals, G put an oval, cherry-red fingernail on the glass overlay of a picture of Joey’s grandfather. “He was a beautiful boy, wasn’t he, Grandfather?”

“Yeah. He was.” Although unwritten, the photo’s time line was plain: It was her grandfather BA. Before Auschwitz. He wore a little cap and a pensive stare. Joey had to look away. That picture only ever reminded her of the evil that had come for him after.

“’Night, G. I love you.” Joey squeezed her grandmother’s shoulders, but G was lost in the picture and didn’t answer.

Joey opened the door to a tidal wave of heat. She had a thought: I could tell Leo I’m not meeting him. But it was a thought almost humorous in its futility.

Just by answering his call, Joey knew she’d pushed a boulder that was already rolling away from her, impossible to catch.

Chapter Three

Joey

Florida
2019

The revolving door of Joey’s high-rise blew her inside the white marbled lobby. The doorman’s back was to the inky panorama of ocean that sprawled beyond A1A, his attention detained by an old man who took up far greater space in the world than his diminutive stance would suggest. As Joey recoiled at the blast of aircon on her post-sea skin, she caught snippets of conversation. She gleaned the following: A tree in a planter on a neighboring balcony had dangled its leaves against the armrest of the old man’s chair; one of the leaves had dipped dangerously close to the old man’s whiskey tumbler. And who knows what kind of chemicals they feed that thing. I could have been poisoned!

Joey hastened into the elevator. Her phone dinged with a call. She put a hand to her heart and slowly slid out her phone. But it was only her sister, Lily. Joey silenced the ringer.