“My baby girl!” he says, hugging her hard. “Happy birthday month, my love. I didn’t know you were coming tonight.”

“Dom,” she says, turning around to face me, “how did I never tell you I have a sister?”

“She’s with you?” he asks, half frowning. The she sounds like an it.

“That she is,” she says, patting me on the cheek with faux tenderness. “She even blew off a movie at the IFC for me.”

The bar’s interior is warm and perfumed, and so is Tai. We don’t spend much time together anymore—even though she’s a year younger, she runs with a crowd a decade older—but being with Tai is like magic. Everyone stares at her when she arrives, then softens into the space around them, like watching her hasn’t made them jealous, competitive, or wary. Watching her has taken them out of themselves for a minute, transported them into her world, where she pads around, full of verve and viv and utterly carefree.

It’s a lie, but it’s more beautiful than many truths.

“Sit,” she says, pulling me down next to her into a very private nook, before I can even look for Kell and crew. A waiter in a white tuxedo jacket appears, blocking our view into the rest of the bar, with two coupes of pink champagne on a silver tray.

One glass has TFH etched on it. I kid you not. That’s the one she plucks from him, with the most gracious, appreciative smile.

“Thaïs Foix Hammick,” I say aloud, just as the model-beautiful waiter clears his throat so that I’ll take the other glass. I grab it, but before I can crane my neck for Kell, much less clink glasses with Tai, she’s setting hers down and pulling her phone out of her pocket.

TFH, reads the monogram on its custom leather case. It has our mother’s Viloki crest painted on it, too. A white fox curled beneath the blood moon.

“Look at this,” she says, music swelling just as I notice her midnight-manicured hand shaking, phone extended toward me.

Dearest Tai, an e-mail reads, from a French name I don’t recognize. The editor in chief and I would like to be the first to invite you and your sister to be the guests of honor at a black-tie retrospective of your mother’s work, sponsored by Dior and held at the Foix Institute in Limatra, on May 24, 2019—

Bile burbles up the back of my throat. “That’s the day she disappeared.”

“Ten years ago to the day,” Tai whispers back, eyes navy-rimmed saucers.