“No, I wouldn’t eat it due to who knew what the hell it even was! We didn’t have such things at chez MacGraw in Jacksonville, Florida. You might have warned me, you know, that there’d be an exam on British culinary practices. But you weren’t anywhere around. I had only Blix to defend me.”

“So that’s when it all started,” he says absently. “That’s when the whole thing unraveled. Whipple and I were playing pool, and he started telling me about his amazing fellowship and talking me into getting in on the act with him, and I was thinking about the need for one more big adventure. You were talking to my Aunt Blix outside in the snow, as I recall. And everything got set into motion.”

“That was it?”

“That was the moment.”

“So you’re saying that if we hadn’t gone our separate ways at that party, then we would have just had our regular wedding and you would have stayed with me? Because, I have to say, that is absurd, and you know it.”

“Well, who knows for sure?” he says. He looks right into my eyes. “All I want to say is that I did love you, you know. I really thought I wanted to get married.”

“Until you didn’t,” I say, and he laughs.

“Yeah, until I didn’t. My bad.”

“So are we to conclude that in the great scheme of things, I lost you but got your great-aunt?”

He puts his hands behind his head and looks up at the sky. “Maybe. Oh, hell. There’s a lot I regret, you know, when I think of her. Our family wasn’t very good to her. I tried to make it up to her at the end, but we never did really connect in a huge way, no matter how much I tried. She was always—well, you know . . . crazy.” He pauses. “Listen,” he says suddenly. “Want to grab some dinner? I haven’t eaten anything today but a peanut butter sandwich. I know this sweet little place on Ninth that’s got amazing burgers and stuff. Some local beers. Good people. Because as long as we’re both here, we might as well have fun, right? No hard feelings for all that bullshit that happened?”

I realize I haven’t eaten in a long time either. “Okay.”

“Are you really not so angry with me, then?”

“Not so much,” I say. “I think I’m having an Insufficient Anger Response, actually.”

“Yeah. You probably should be mad as hell. But I’m glad you’re not.” He stands up and stretches, giving me a view of his nice flat belly and low-slung jeans. It hurts, the deep long familiarity of him, the badassness of him, and finally I have to look away, so I take the last drink of my beer and look out at the lights of Brooklyn instead.

I am supposed to be here. I am supposed to be here. I take a deep, full breath of the new unknown. I should call Jeremy. I have so many feelings that I’ll have to sort out later.

“And hey, while we’re eating,” he says, “you can tell me everything that’s going on with you—and why you serendipitously showed up on Blix’s doorstep today.”

I guess that’s when it really hits me that he probably has no idea that Blix has left me the house. That thought arrives at the back of my neck first and works its way around to the front of my brain, rather like a bug making its way around a nerve-wracking circuitous path.

Just then, the door to the roof bangs open, and a kid who looks to be about ten years old, with a mop of pale hair and a huge pair of round black plastic glasses, comes charging onto the roof, dribbling a basketball and dancing all around. He leaps up onto the edge of a planter, but he doesn’t notice us until he’s making his last mental calculation, and when he does, he’s so startled that he doesn’t quite make the height he needs. The ceramic planter falls over and smashes on the ground, and dirt goes everywhere.

“Sammy, my man! What the heck you doing?” Noah says.

“Oh! Sorry!” The boy stops and looks instantly horrified.

“Nah, it’s okay. It’s just a planter. You scared me, that’s all.”

“I’ll clean it up.”

“No, go get a broom and dustpan, and I’ll take care of it. I don’t want you to get cut.” Noah turns to me. “This is Sammy, our resident lovable juvenile delinquent and breaker of pottery. His mom is Jessica, the one I was telling you about. And Sammy, this is Marnie.”

Sammy says hi to me, and pushes his hair out of his eyes, and then he runs off and comes back with the dustpan and the broom, and Noah and I get to work sweeping up all the shards while Sammy bounces his basketball over in the other corner of the roof. I keep stealing little glances over at him because he’s so adorable—like a serious little owl with good dance moves.

“Hey, Noah, guess what!” he calls after a few minutes. “My dad’s coming to get me tomorrow morning, and we’re going to Cooperstown for the weekend.”

Noah gives a fake growl. “What’s so great about Cooperstown? You don’t care about baseball or anything, do you?”

“Yes, I do! You know I do! And we’re gonna stay in a B and B and have pancakes for breakfast, and he said maybe there’s gonna be a pool.”

His mom appears just then. She’s thin and gorgeous and wearing jeans and a gray cardigan and she sighs a lot. She looks over at Sammy like any minute he might turn into something that’s going to disappear on her.

Noah introduces us—“Jessica, Marnie; Marnie, Jessica”—and she holds out her hand for me to shake.

“Oh, Marnie!” she says. “I’ve heard Blix talk about you! Oh my goodness, it’s so awful what happened—I miss her every single day.” She glances over at Sammy and lowers her voice. “He does, too. He adored her. There was nobody like her.”

Sammy is listening to us talk and dancing over by the fire pit, like a goofy bird ready to take flight.

“Sammy, it’s bath time, and you need to come in and get your stuff packed up,” she says. Her eyebrows are all knitted up in a frown. “Wait. Did you break this planter?”

“I didn’t mean to.”

“It was an accident,” says Noah. “No biggie.”

But she is clearly worried about Sammy being careless, and now he’s destroyed this planter that was Blix’s, and those were Houndy’s red geraniums planted inside, and everything, she says sadly, seems to be crashing to an end all around them—and right then, my phone starts buzzing in my pocket, and I would be so deliriously happy to be able to escape from this conversation except that when I look down at my phone, I see the faces of all my family members grinning and waving—all of them, plus Jeremy—wanting to FaceTime with me. It’s as though they’re suddenly right there on the rooftop with me.

I go tearing inside, down the stairs and into the hall and skidding into Blix’s kitchen before they can see where I am and—oh God—who I’m with.

“Hi!” I say, and there they all are, jockeying for position in front of their little screen: Natalie holding up Amelia, who is blowing bubbles—“Look, Auntie Marnie, I talks with spit!” Natalie crows in a baby voice—and my mother and father peeking in from the side, trying to ask me a million questions. All of them at once.

“Where are you right now?”

“Is that really Blix’s house? Show me the kitchen!”

“Is it old? It looks really old!”

“Don’t even tell me those walls are red!”

“You look tired, sweetie cakes. Bet you wish you could just come home!”

And Jeremy, last of all, smiling so winningly. “Are you having a good time? Do you like the house?”

I hear Noah coming down from the roof, and so I dash with the phone downstairs toward the living room and sit down on the floor, as far away from the window as I can get.

“Oh, yes, it’s lovely!” I say to Jeremy, and if my face is turning ashen or bright red, either one, I can only hope he doesn’t see in the dim light of the living room. From the kitchen, I hear Noah throwing our beer bottles into the recycling bin and whistling.

“We just wanted to make sure you’re all right, that you made it in and everything,” says my father. “Also, honey, just so you know: we’ve had a family meeting and we’ve decided to teach Jeremy the quadruple solitaire game tonight.”

“Yep, I’m in way over my head,” yells Jeremy from off camera.

“So how are you, sweetie?” says my dad.

“I’m fine. Nothing much to report as yet.”

My mother’s face now looms in the phone. “CAN YOU SEE ME, HONEY?”

“Yes, Mom! Yes, I see you just fine. I hear you, too.”

“So just tell us this much: ARE YOU GOING TO BE ABLE TO SELL THAT HOUSE, DO YOU THINK?”

I look up then to see Noah standing in the doorway of the living room, his arms folded. And if I had thought he looked shocked when I was standing at the front door earlier, that’s nothing compared to how he’s looking at me right now.

TWENTY-TWO

MARNIE

So. Here we go.

When I hang up, Noah comes all the way into the living room, walking so deliberately it’s as though the floor might be made of pointy little rocks. His eyes are round and bright with shock. He sits down on the floor across from me and shakes his head.

“Okay, Marnie,” he says slowly, “why don’t you tell me what’s going on? What are you doing here?”