“Why don’t you ask her? And while you’re at it, ask why she had a DUI charge under that name.”

My mouth dropped.

We’d told each other everything. Every stupid little story, every pixel that made up the whole portrait. I felt it in my bones. I knew her, heart and soul.

Except the name she was born with, and this.

I fumbled a bill out of my wallet, slapped it on the table. “I have to go.”

Max caught my elbow as I stood. Firm, but not painful.

“Think about what I said, Vada. I care about you. I don’t want you to fall prey to a danger you refuse to see.”

I dug my nails into his forearm. “Think about what I said. No one touches her. Not while I’m still breathing.”

I left him there and stormed onto the street.

The house on the promenade was dark, all the windows onyx mirrors, like laptop screens. Weeds knotted the lawn and the roses hedging the porch had grown feral and fangy, vaguely carnivorous. I got out of the cab and stared up at the second floor, hit hard with vertigo.

This used to be ours. Mine and hers.

meeting’s over, I texted Ellis, and turned off my ringer.

The mailbox was stuffed with assorted spam and, for a Mr. Brandt Zoeller: a bill from a hospital in Naperville, Illinois; a letter from a Chicago law firm; a hunting magazine; gun and fishing catalogs.

Who the hell was Brandt Zoeller? Same last name as Elle’s dad.

Was Brandt her brother? Cousin?

Why hadn’t she told me about him?

My phone vibrated. I ignored it and padded down the porch steps and into the gangway.

“Occam’s razor,” I echoed. “That reminds me of Picasso’s bulls. This series of sketches he drew. The first ones are very detailed, heavily shaded. You can see the strain of muscle in the bull’s flanks, the hairs in its hide, the folds of fat. So much weight, so much palpability. Then the sketches become more abstract. Shadows dissolve. Three dimensions flatten to two. It becomes a cartoon bull, comical. And he keeps abstracting it further, to one dimension. To a wire skeleton. Just a few curves, a broad back and horns. And the crazy thing is, it still looks like a bull. It actually looks even more like a bull than the original because it’s the essence of bullness. It’s not a particular bull anymore but all of them. A symbol. A word in a brand-new language.”

Simplify what you see until it’s only bones, essence, soul. That’s the only way to understand what something really is.

I climbed up the back porch, stepping rabbit-soft, and peeked in a window.

Hanging industrial lights, Expressionist lithographs, wire-frame chairs. My touches. All still here. But now there was an army of beer bottles besieging the trash, a battered pair of men’s running shoes. Crumbs dusting the table.

And in the hall, cutting against the periwinkle ocean haze, the silhouette of a man leaning out, gazing straight at me.

I froze dead.

“Emily?” he called in a deep voice.

Then he moved toward the door.

I stood there, mind racing. Meet him. Ask him: Who are you? Who is she? Go behind her back on this, shatter the fragile chrysalis of trust we’d begun to rebuild.

Or let her tell me, on her own terms.

My phone buzzed. I jerked around and vaulted over the railing.

I ran madly through the yard, hopped the neighbor’s fence, and scrambled through their garden to the alley. No backward glance to see if the man gave chase. On the brick paving I broke into a sprint and didn’t stop till I was five blocks away.

Phone still buzzing.

“Hey.”

“Finally.” Elle sounded irked. “I’ve been calling forever. I’m at the ferry. Where are you?”

“Almost there. Sorry.”

“Why are you out of breath?”

“Went for a run.”

“Okay. Weird, but okay.” Puzzlement, that lilting tone she took when she was trying to figure something out. “I’ll wait for you.”

I walked the last few blocks to cool down. Found her sitting on the pier, her hair ruffling in the hot breeze. I came up from behind and stood there a moment, watching her.

Who are you? I thought. Who is this stranger with my best friend’s face?

I sat down, dizzy.

“There you are,” Ellis said. “I was worried. Are you all right?”

“Fine. How’d your mission go?”

“Complete success. I jammed the cameras and put the laptop back. We’ve got a cloned drive, and he can’t prove we stole it.” She frowned. “You’re quiet. Did something happen with Max?”

“No.”

“Get any new info?”

You lied about your name. There’s a strange man in your house.

“Nothing.”

She tugged at a shoelace. Then she said, “Vada, were you on the promenade?”

“I ran by our old place.”

She said nothing.

“Still renting it?”

“I sublet to someone.” Her brow clouded. “You went to look, instead of asking me. You don’t trust me.”

My fists balled on the concrete. I couldn’t hold it in. “You want to talk about trust? Okay. Why didn’t you tell me about your DUI as a minor?”

Her eyes widened. “How do you know about that?”

“That is probably something you should’ve told me, Ellis.”

Or should I say Emily? Emily Zoeller. Emily Brennan.

Whoever you are.

“It’s not what you think. It was so stupid. God.” She seemed about to cry. “I was like, sixteen. I drank one of those mini bottles of schnapps at a party. Then I drove someone home. Our taillight was out. I got pulled over and my friend made a scene, so the cop tested us both. I blew 0.01. But Illinois has a zero-tolerance policy for minors, so it counted as a DUI.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all.” She eyed me sidelong. “How did you know?”

“Max told me. He’s obsessed with us. He wants to know every little detail of our lives.”

“Those records were sealed. How did he find out?”

“Online, probably. All it takes is one idiot blabbing on social media.” And knowing your real name.

Ellis clutched her fists in her lap. “Maybe it’s better that he knows. That all the truth comes out.”

“What truth?”

“About that night.”

“Don’t get crazy ideas about confessing. You don’t even remember it.”

“But you do. You could tell him, Vada. I know I got behind the wheel.”

I looked out at the water. “Why are you so eager to come clean? It’s like there’s something else on your conscience.”

“Why are you so eager to protect me? It’s like you’re hiding something from both of us.”

Clever little bird.

“Ellis.” I turned my head. “We have to be honest with each other. About everything.”

Sunlight flashed on the water like a blade slicing the tops off waves, bleeding liquid silver. Her pupils shrank and left only clear moss green. Her freckles were sun-dark, fetching. I knew her face so well. I’d never seen anything in it but sweetness, wonder, purity.

Now there was something else. When I looked at her through an artist’s eyes, impartially, I saw it.

Fear.

“Remember saying you could trust me with anything? That you knew I’d never turn my back on you, no matter what?”

She nodded.

“Do you still trust me like that, Elle?”

She nodded again, slower.

“I trust you like that, too. There’s nothing I’d keep from you.” I breathed in, salt sharp in my throat. “There are some things I’m still trying to process. Things I haven’t accepted myself. I can’t talk about them yet. But there’s no one I’d tell before you.”

Her eyes skittered away from mine. “I have stuff like that, too.”

“Promise me again. Promise we’ll never turn our backs on each other.”

“I promise, Vada.”

“Ditto, Ellis.”

No matter how many times I said her name, she didn’t break.

I wondered what would happen if I said Emily.

The ferry coasted up to the dock and we joined the people streaming on. We went to the top deck and stood against the rail, against the infinite blueness of sea and sky. The wind tore at our faces like fingers trying to pull away masks.