Two a.m.

Leo's forehead was a hundred and three.

Adrian stood in the ER hallway holding a paper cup of coffee gone cold and watched a nurse change the IV.

"Stomach bug," the doctor had said. "Plus he skipped his evening dose of his asthma controller. Has Mom been out of town?"

Adrian had not answered.

He pulled out his phone. Opened Amelia's name. Stared at the empty thread.

His thumb hovered.

Leo is in the hospital. Come.

He typed it. Looked at it. Deleted it.

She'd come running. She'd kiss his hair and ask if he'd eaten and take the chair Adrian was sitting in, and Adrian would have to sit there and watch his son reach for her and not him.

He put the phone away.

He pulled the chair closer to the bed.

Leo's small hand was curled by his cheek. His cracked lips moved.

"Mommy," he whispered.

Adrian leaned in. "Daddy's here, buddy."

"Hurts. Mommy. Want Mommy."

"Mommy's busy, buddy."

"What's she so busy for, cleaning my room or cooking? I feel like having the small pancakes she makes." He mumbled to himself and then fell asleep.

Adrian sat very still.

The IV beeped. The nurse came back with a wet washcloth. He took it from her without looking up and laid it across his son's forehead the way he had seen Amelia do a hundred times.

He did it wrong. The cloth slipped. He fixed it. It slipped again.

He did not text her. A surge of irritability welled up inside him, and he added her to the blacklist. Since you've walked out, don't come looking for us again, he muttered to himself.

* * *

Across town, in a forty-second-floor penthouse, Amelia was wearing somebody else's silk pajamas and eating cold pizza for breakfast.

"Babe." Maya kicked open the bedroom door, two coffees in her hands. "We are going shopping."

"Maya, I don't have - "

"Stop. I have cards. Get up."

Maya tossed her a black baseball cap and a pair of giant black sunglasses.

"Rules. One - wear these the whole time, my fans are unhinged. Two - don't look at price tags. Three - smile at least once an hour, or I rap in the food court. Loud, Amelia. So loud."

Amelia laughed. Rusty. Real.

* * *

The mall was three floors of glass and marble. Two girls spotted Maya by the escalator and screamed. Maya signed a phone case, kissed a cheek, kept walking.

She steered Amelia into a boutique on the second floor and pointed at a rack of dresses.

For the next two hours she played dress-up like Amelia was a doll she'd waited six years to unbox.

A black slip dress. "Too funeral."

A red wrap. "Too 'I'm having an affair.' Save it."

A green silk thing. "That's the one to break a man on his knees, but not today."

And then -

A pale yellow off-shoulder. Buttercup yellow. The kind of yellow that made skin glow.

Maya zipped Amelia into it and turned her toward the mirror.

"Oh."

Amelia looked up.

The woman in the mirror was twenty-eight. Her shoulders were bare. Her collarbones sharp. There was a faint red line across her throat where a chain had cut her, and somehow even that looked like jewelry.

She did not recognize herself.

A salesgirl walked past. Stopped. Walked back.

"Ma'am - sorry, are you - somebody famous? You look - "

Maya cackled. "She's somebody."

A second salesgirl: "Is she that actress from - "

A third: "My God, the lighting on her - "

Maya leaned her chin on Amelia's bare shoulder.

"Six years," she said. "Six years that pair of mutts had this in their kitchen and treated you like a slave. They didn't go blind, babe. They were never looking. There's a difference."

Amelia couldn't answer.

"Okay. New plan. Tomorrow we drag your sorry-ass husband through every court in this state. While we wait - we find his boss. That Chairman whose name's on the building. We make Adrian Hale watch his wife walk into that man's office wearing exactly this dress."

Amelia froze.

"What."

"His boss. The Chairman. Adrian's been kissing that man's shoes for ten years, right? Imagine - picture it - imagine the Chairman pulls Adrian into his office Monday morning and goes - " Maya dropped her voice an octave, "- Hale. About your wife. She's coming to dinner. With me. Dump her or you're fired. Your choice. - and then she walks in in this - "

"Maya, stop - "

"- and the Chairman goes, baby, you'd better leave him quick, because if you stay, your husband's career goes in the trash, and after I'm done with you tonight, sweetheart - "

"Maya."

But Maya was off, eyes shining. "And then he kisses her against the desk - "

Amelia wasn't listening anymore.

Maya had said the Chairman whose name's on the building.

Adrian's boss.

Alexander Blackwood. She never thought that The Alexander Blackwood was her Alex,till yesterday.

He had been Adrian's boss the whole time.

That was why he was at the gala last night. He had not come for anyone. He had come because it was his building. His charity. His money paying for the string quartet and the champagne and the diamond clip on her son's bow tie.

For six years she had been married to a man whose paychecks were signed by Alexander Blackwood, and nobody had ever told her.

* * *

"Mommy!"

A small voice. Across the boutique floor.

Amelia turned.

A little girl in a pink coat was tugging the hand of a tall man in a charcoal suit, pointing right at her -

"Mommy! Mommy that's my mommy!"

Lily.

And behind Lily, holding her hand, was Alexander Blackwood.

He stopped walking.

He'd been frowning at his daughter, opening his mouth to correct her - Amelia could see the words forming, Sweetheart, your mommy is on a long trip, your mommy isn't here - and then he saw what Lily was pointing at.

He saw Amelia.

In buttercup yellow. Bare shoulders. Loose hair.

She's got a pair of sunglasses on, hiding her features completely, yet every move and every line of her posture feels so much like the woman he's always had in his heart.

His mouth stayed open. The correction didn't come out.

Amelia could not move.

She watched his eyes go dark in the specific way men's eyes went dark when a woman walked into a room.

She watched his head tilt - that same quarter inch - and she watched the question come back.

Wait.

He took a step forward.

And Maya - Maya, oblivious, still in mid-fantasy - leaned in close and said, plenty loud -

"Imagine The Mr. Alexander Blackwood bending you over his desk and going, baby, you're too good for him, leave him tonight or watch his career burn - "

Alexander stopped walking.

Amelia watched it happen in real time.

She watched his eyes go from dark to flat.

The quarter-inch tilt straightened out. The recognition that had been almost there got filed away - neatly, completely - under a different folder.

His Amelia did not stand half-naked in a department store with a woman in a thousand-dollar chain who was loudly fantasizing about him bending strangers over desks. His Amelia was shy. His Amelia said please and thank you and blushed when men looked at her too long.

This woman was just another one who looks like his Amelia.

Alexander's whole face went cold.

He scooped Lily up off the ground. Lily, mid-shriek of "Mommy! Mommy!", found herself airborne and tucked against her father's shoulder.

"Daddy, but she's - "

"That is not your mother, Lily."

"Daddy, she - "

" We don't shout at a random women in stores, and call her Mommy. Do you understand me?"

"Daddy - "

"Lily."

His voice was low and cold.

Lily started to cry.

Alexander Blackwood walked out of the boutique with his daughter on his hip. Did not look back.

The bell on the door jingled.

The boutique went very quiet.

Maya, frozen mid-fantasy, looked at Amelia.

"Babe."

"Yeah."

"Was that - "

"Yeah."

"Did he just hear me - "

"Yeah."

A long pause.

"Babe," Maya said, in the smallest voice Amelia had ever heard her use, "I think I might've fucked up."

* * *

Maya's penthouse. Ten in the morning.

Amelia signed the last page of the divorce petition and slid the stack across the marble counter to the lawyer.

"That's everything," Mr. Park said. "Filing first thing tomorrow. You sure you don't want anything? Spousal support? The apartment?"

"Nothing."

"Mrs. Hale - but what about your parents' inheritance"

"Quinn. It's Quinn now. That he should give it back. Please make sure of it in these papers,and just send him a copy."

Mr. Park did some changes,and passed them to me

She picked up her phone to forward the scan to Adrian.

She typed his name in the recipient field.

Cannot send message. Recipient has blocked you.

She blinked.

She tried again. Cannot send message.

Maya leaned over her shoulder, sipping a smoothie. "What's wrong?"

"He blocked my number."

A beat.

Maya put the smoothie down very slowly.

"Excuse me. Excuse me, did you just say. That grown man. The CEO. The one who paraded his ex around in front of four hundred people in YOUR husband-shaped role last night. THAT man. Blocked YOU?"

"Maya - "

"Babe. Babe, is he a mean girl in eighth grade? Did he block you? Are we doing that? Is he going to write DON'T TALK TO HER on the bathroom wall next? My God. The pettiness. THE PETTINESS, Amelia."

Amelia laughed despite herself. Wet, surprised, real.

"Email it," Maya said. "Email that little weasel. From your lawyer's account. Make it official. Make it ugly."

Mr. Park nodded. Pulled out his laptop. Started typing.

Maya wasn't done. She was pacing.

"He blocked her. He BLOCKED her. Sir, you should be on your knees in the gutter outside her building begging for a chance to wash her car, and instead you are clicking 'block' like a teenage girl whose crush didn't text back. Unbelievable."

"Maya, please - "

"I'm putting it in a song."

"Don't put it in a song."

"It's already in the song. The song is writing itself. He blocked her, your honor. Your honor, he blocked her - "

The laptop pinged. Mr. Park looked up.

"Sent. He'll have it in his inbox in thirty seconds."

Amelia exhaled.

She didn't realize she'd been holding her breath until it left her.

* * *

Maya made eggs. Maya made coffee. Maya put a plate in front of Amelia and said "eat, woman," and then Amelia's phone buzzed.

She flinched.

It wasn't Adrian.

Maison Galerie Lefèvre, the email said. Paris.

She read it three times.

"Maya."

"Mm?"

"My painting got into the Paris show."

Maya's fork stopped midair.

"The - the one you submitted four years ago? The one Adrian said wasn't going anywhere?"

"It's nominated. Audience Choice category."

"Babe."

"They want me there. Opening night. Friday."

"BABE."

Maya's chair scraped back. She came around the counter and grabbed Amelia's face in both hands.

"You," she said, "are getting on a plane."

"Maya, I can't just - "

"Watch me. I'm calling my travel guy. You're going to Paris."

"I don't have anything to wear, I don't have a place to - "

"You have Auntie Meg."

Amelia froze.

"...Auntie Meg?"

"Texan. Fifty-seven. Six feet tall in heels. Drinks bourbon out of crystal at noon. Married a French banker in the nineties, divorced him in the two-thousands, kept the apartment. Owns half the sixth arrondissement. Your mother's college roommate at Vassar - was the maid of honor at her wedding, was supposed to be at the funeral and missed her flight, has been mad at herself about it for six years. Loves you like her own. Has been waiting for you to leave that man since the day you met him." Maya was already dialing. "Pack."

* * *

Meg met her at Charles de Gaulle in a camel coat and pearl earrings the size of small grapes, holding a bouquet of white peonies and a flask of bourbon she had emptied on the drive over. She took one look at Amelia, dropped the peonies on the floor of the terminal, and pulled her in.

"Oh, sweetheart," she said into Amelia's hair. "What did he do to you."

Amelia couldn't speak.

Meg held her tighter. "Come on. Driver's right outside. We talk later. First - wine. Then bath. Then sleep. Tomorrow, your show."

In the back of the car, Meg held Amelia's hand and did not let go.

"You should have come years ago," she said quietly. "When your mother - when the accident - I told you. Come live with me. I'd be your mother now. And you said - "

"I was twenty-two. I wanted to wait."

"For that boy. Who you would never tell me about. Not his name, not his face. Nothing. Just him."

Amelia smiled at the window. A thin, tired smile.

"He was mine, Meg. I didn't want to share him. Not even with you."

"And then he didn't come back."

"And then he didn't come back. And then Adrian - " She exhaled. "His ex had just left him. My boyfriend had just left me. We were both - broken. We drank too much one night. Leo happened. We got married because we should have. I buried the boy who left me, and I gave everything I had to Adrian and Leo."

Meg waited.

"I was bad at it."

"No, honey."

"I was. I tried for six years and they hated me by the end of it. Maybe - maybe the people I love just don't love me back. Maybe it's a thing about me. Like a - " she laughed, dry, " - like a curse."

Meg's hand tightened on hers.

"It is not a curse," she said. "It is bad men, baby. Just bad men."

* * *

Two hours later. The drawing room. Amelia, finally asleep upstairs.

Meg was on the phone.

"Alex. It's Meg."

A pause on the other end. "Meg. Is something wrong?"

"I need you to do something for me."

"Anything."

"There is a young woman staying with me. She is filing for divorce from her husband. He is a snake. He has hurt her for six years. I want you to do two things. First - protect her. She is in your city when she comes back. Second - " Meg swirled her bourbon. " - I want you to announce, publicly, that she is your new girlfriend."

Silence.

"Meg."

"I know."

"I cannot - I do not know this woman."

"You will. Three months. Fake. A photograph in a magazine. Maybe two. Enough to protect her from her husband's social standing. Then you walk away."

"With all respect, no."

"Alex."

"I am not pretending to date a stranger. I have a daughter. My company. My - "

"Alex."

"No, Meg."

A long pause.

Then, softly:

"Your mother. On the last day. What did she say to you."

Silence.

"What did she say, Alex."

"...Meg."

"She said take care of Auntie Meg. Yes? She said godmother is mother too. Yes?"

"...Yes."

"Then you take care of me. Three months. Some pictures. I will never ask you for anything else as long as I live."

A very long silence.

Then, quiet, defeated:

"Three months. Fake dating. After that I am out. I will not - I cannot - there are things you don't know."

"What things, Alex?"

"Nothing. It doesn't matter. Three months. Send me her information."

Meg smiled into the phone.

"Her name is Amelia."

A beat.

"Amelia what."

"Amelia Quinn."

The line went very, very quiet.

Meg pulled the phone from her ear, frowned at the screen - call still connected - and put it back.

"...Alex?"

Nothing.

"Alex, are you there?"

A breath. Just one. Caught.

Then -

"Meg."

His voice had changed.

It had gone low. It had gone strange. It was the voice of a man who had just been hit, very hard, in the chest, by something he had not seen coming.

"Say that name again."

"Amelia. Amelia Quinn. Her mother was my dearest friend, Alex. I've held this girl since she was three days old. Why - "

"Meg."

"What."

"Where is she right now."

"Upstairs. Sleeping. Alex, what is - "

"Don't let her leave."

The line clicked.

Meg lowered the phone slowly.

She set it on the table, picked up her bourbon, took a long, thoughtful sip.

In thirty-five years she had never heard her godson make that sound. Not when his father walked out. Not when his mother died.

He had just made one over a name.

Meg looked at the phone on her coffee table.

She did not know what was between her godson and her Amelia. But the instinct said -

Something.

Meg smiled.

"Well," she said softly. "This is going to be fun."

* * *

Six years ago.He was just Alex,without that expensive last name from his Father.

The phone call came at 4:17 in the morning.

"Mr. Blackwood. Your mother has been admitted. Please come."

Alexander was in another city. He drove all night. He made it by sunrise and his mother was awake.

She had been a single mother for twenty years. His father had walked out of the apartment when Alex was four and never come back. She had worked two jobs and burned dinners and made it to every parent-teacher conference and never once said a bitter word about the man who left.

She was the only person in the world he loved.

"Listen," she said.

He listened.

"The girl next door. Anya. She's been bringing me soup every day for three years. When I had pneumonia in February she carried me down four flights of stairs to the ambulance. The hospital called her first, Alex. Not you. Her. Because I asked them to."

"Mom - "

"Her visa runs out in eleven days. They're sending her back. There is nobody for her there, Alex. Nobody."

He saw it coming.

"Mom, no - "

"Marry her."

"Mom."

"It does not have to be real. It only has to be a paper. You owe her, Alex. I owe her. She kept me alive long enough to see you grow."

"...I promise."

She died at 8:42 that morning.

He married Anya at the courthouse two weeks later.

He did not call Amelia. How could he?

Hi,Amelia, this is my new wife! Hope you guys can get along?

That's ridiculous!

* * *

One year later.After a lot of things with "his marriage and his dad", Alexander finally went home.

It took him an hour to drive past Amelia's apartment building. Twenty more minutes parked across the street trying to figure out what the hell he was going to say.

Hi. Sorry I disappeared. My mother died and I got married. Long story. Are you free for coffee.

The door of her building opened.

Out came a man in a navy suit. Behind him, a woman.

His Amelia.

In a yellow sundress, carrying a baby bag that looked too big for her.

She walked half a step behind the man. She was smiling.

The man got into the driver's seat. Did not open her door. She got in by herself, still smiling, the bag on her lap.

The car pulled away.

Alexander never saw the man's face.

He sat in his own car for a long time after the street was empty. Hands on the wheel.

Then he drove away too.

* * *

He never learned the husband's name.

That was the rule he made for himself, and he kept it for six years.

The first month he asked one person - an old college friend, someone they had both known back when they were both still kids. He asked, "Is she happy?" and the friend said, "Oh, very. Beautiful little family. He treats her like a queen," and Alexander said, "That's all I needed," and changed the subject.

He never asked again.

Not the man's name. Not the company. Not the address. Nothing he could go look up at three in the morning.

If he had a name he would Google. If he Googled he would find a face. If he found a face he would memorize it. If he memorized it he would see it every time he closed his eyes.

So no name.

Just the answer. She's happy. He's good to her. She's fine.

He would say thank you, and he would change the subject, and he would go home, and he would take his pill at eleven and lie in the dark for two hours before it kicked in.

Some nights he did not take the pill. Some nights he just lay there.

He had a lot of those nights.

* * *

Anya was kind.

Two years they lived as roommates. East wing, west wing, polite hellos in the kitchen.

Then one night she knocked on his door.

"I'm tired of being alone, Alex. Aren't you."

He let her in.

It was not love. It was two people too tired to be lonely anymore.

Lily came nine months later. Brown eyes. Stubborn chin. The first thing in three years that had made his chest loosen, just a little.

He thought, okay. This is enough. This is what life is.

Anya knew it wasn't, before he did.

She left a note on the counter on Lily's third birthday.

Alex -

I deserve to be happy. So do you. We are both still loving people who aren't here. Let's stop pretending we don't know.

Take the apartment. I want Paris. Take care of our girl.

- A.

He read it standing in his socks, cold coffee in his hand.

He smiled, and signed.

* * *

Lily took it badly. The quiet way.

For six months she did not say Mommy once. Then suddenly she said it everywhere. To the nanny. To the bakery woman. To strangers on the playground.

She was trying the word out, the way a child tries keys in a lock she doesn't have, hoping one will turn.

She had favorites. A teacher. A neighbor.

But the one she came home talking about, every day, for the last four months -

"Daddy, Leo's mommy made cookies and gave me three. Daddy, she has soft hands. Daddy why doesn't Leo's mommy like Leo? Leo says she does but I don't think so because - "

"Lily. Bedtime."

"But Daddy - "

"Bedtime."

* * *

Last night. The gala.

His CEO's little party, he was not interested in. But Lily was bored at my office, she sneaked out to eat some desserts that I forbid her. So I had to stop her,my sweat little devil!

And I saw that woman.

White cotton dress. Cake box on her hip. The wrong kind of dress for the room.

He had glanced at her once.

Then once more.

Something in his chest had done something stupid.

Don't, he had told himself. Stop it. Every woman with that heir color in a sundress is not her. You've done this a thousand times.

Then the cake had hit the floor and the cream had hit her face, and a five-year-old boy had called her the cleaning lady, and the whole room had laughed.

And Alexander had stood up.

He had reached into his jacket for the pocket square. He had taken three steps before he caught himself.

Stop.

Look at her. Cream in her hair. Cheap dress. Married. Crying on her birthday in front of four hundred strangers.

That is not your Amelia.

Your Amelia is happy. Your Amelia has been happy for six years.

Whoever this is, she is not happy.

Sit down.

He sat down.

He never looked at the dais.

He went home and could not sleep and took two pills instead of one and still lay awake until dawn.

* * *

Now.

Alexander Blackwood sat at his desk at eleven in the morning with a phone in his hand and Meg's voice still in his ear.

She is filing for divorce. He has hurt her for six years.

Her name is Amelia. Amelia Quinn.

Is that his Amelia Quinn? That girl's face showed up in his mind again.

His heart had done something he had not felt in six years. It had not just lifted. It had jumped.

For one full second - a second he was deeply ashamed of - he had been happy.

Happy that she was getting divorced. Someone she had married was being thrown out of her life. She was gonna be free and alone.

His Amelia. She had not been fine.

And he had stayed away. Cleanly. Disciplined. Nobly. Because he was a good man who did not interfere in another man's marriage.

What a useful little story he had told himself.

He stood up.

He walked to the window.

He picked up the phone.

"Cancel everything tomorrow," he said. "Get the plane ready. I'm going to Paris."

He set the phone down.

If that was her last night.

He'd find out in the morning.

* * *