“How would you know? You can’t read my mind. You don’t have to ask yourself what it would be like if you had to help support your brother and his wife and a baby—”

“That’s not going to happen!” Even if I didn’t have so much faith in Shay and Arturo, the Ortiz family is reasonably well off. Carmen and Arturo’s parents aren’t rich, but they’re in a position to help out if the new baby needs anything.

Carmen hasn’t even heard me. “—you don’t have to ask yourself if you’re going to get derailed, because you don’t have any responsibilities like that. You can just keep working on your thesis, and going to the studio. You’re going to make it no matter what. It’s not like that for me.”

“Of course you’re going to make it. You’re a math genius.”

“No, I’m not.” Her voice breaks. “I was really smart on the high school level. And the undergrad level. But now? At this point? I’m falling behind—I can tell I’m falling behind, and my advisor says I have to buckle down or—”

Carmen starts to cry. A few people in the brunch line are staring. Well, let them stare. I hug her tightly. “You’re not scared for Arturo. You’re scared for yourself.”

“One of us has to make it,” she whispers as she hugs me back. “I don’t think it’s going to be me.”

Her behavior over the past several months finally makes sense. All this time, Carmen’s been dealing with this incredible anxiety by pushing her fears onto her brother. First she resented Shay for weighing Arturo down with responsibility so young; this morning, she turned on Arturo. But really she’s scared to death that she’ll fall and no one will be there to catch her.

“Listen to me, okay? You’re going to get through this. Yeah, graduate work is difficult. It’s supposed to be! But you were smart enough to get there, and you’re smart enough to make it through.”

Carmen shook her head against my shoulder. “I don’t know.”

“Sometimes life is like a video game. When things get harder, and the obstacles get tougher, it just means you leveled up.”

She laughs brokenly. “Except I suck at video games.”

“I know.” Carmen never even figured out how to steer her car in Grand Theft Auto. “But you don’t suck at math. Come on. Deep breaths.”

She keeps crying it out for a while, though, and is still teary when we finally get seated. Still, one of the great truths of life is that any situation can be improved with coffee. By her second cup, she’s perked up a little—and when her waffles arrive, she’s calm again, enough to notice my relatively empty plate. “Hey, why didn’t you order anything?”

“I got tea and toast.”

Carmen gives me a look, no doubt remembering my ability to slaughter a stack of pancakes.

“Well,” I admit, “Jonah might have made me breakfast this morning.”

“Oh, yeah? He stayed over?”

“I stayed over.”

Carmen’s eyes are still red from crying, but I can tell she’s glad to have something else to think about for a while. “You’ve been so quiet about this guy. When you first met Geordie, you told me everything.”

I’ll never be able to explain why I didn’t tell her about Jonah at first, or why so much of our relationship will remain secret. But if he’s going to be a bigger part of my life, I have to open up about him a little more. “Jonah’s a very private person,” I say. “I respect that.”

“Fine. Be mysterious. It doesn’t matter, because obviously this relationship is the definition of a whirlwind romance. And you’re totally into him. I mean, you went to Scotland with him! How much was that ticket at the last minute?”

She isn’t asking for real—just trying to get me to prove I’m head over heels for Jonah. Still, this might be the moment to be totally candid about the Scotland trip. “He got me the ticket.”

Her eyes go wide. “Jonah bought you a ticket to Scotland? Oh, my God, Vivienne. That’s huge!”

“Not really. His dad actually was one of the cofounders of Oceanic. So he’s got an in with the airline.”

This doesn’t have the effect I expected. Carmen frowns. “You said Oceanic?”

“Uh, yeah. Why?” Was there a crash today or something?

Instead Carmen says, “So . . . Jonah’s part of that screwed-up family in the tabloids.”

I gape at her. “How do you know that?”

“If his dad founded Oceanic, and his name is Jonah Marks, that means his dad was Alexander Marks, right?”

“Since when have you heard of any of these people?”

Carmen makes a face. “The usual! TMZ, sometimes the news, supermarket tabloids—I mean, come on, you have to read those once in a while, right? What else can you do while you’re waiting in line?”

“I check my phone and talk myself out of buying candy bars, like a normal person!” Great. Everyone in the whole world pays more attention to gossip than I do. So much for keeping Jonah’s secrets. Calming myself as best I can, I say, “I think Jonah tries to keep his distance from all that.”

“He didn’t even say anything about his mom this morning?” Carmen winces. “I bet he hadn’t heard yet.”

“Hadn’t heard what?”

Even the most serious news sources print sensational headlines for this story. There’s no way to describe it that isn’t lurid.

CHICAGO “MAD HEIRESS” ARRESTED FOR ASSAULT ON STEPSON

Everything from the Wall Street Journal to OhNoTheyDidn’t has differing accounts of what happened. A few blurry camera-phone videos have been posted to YouTube, but none of them reveal much beyond distant movement in the dark, and the sound of a woman shouting. As near as I can piece together, Jonah’s mother left Redgrave House—already unusual, for her—and went to The Orchid, a downtown club and restaurant so chic even I’ve heard of it. The Orchid’s owner turns out to be Maddox Hale, Jonah’s younger stepbrother. When Jonah’s mom accosted Maddox, an argument ensued, and apparently she hurt him—though nobody can agree whether she knifed Maddox through the hand, only slapped him, or something in between. I don’t get a good look at Jonah’s mother at any point on the videos, but I do hear a man saying, “She doesn’t know what she’s doing. It’s all right. I don’t want to press charges.”

So Maddox would have let it go, whatever it was she did. The police feel differently.

All I know for sure is that Jonah must feel so torn up inside. And I understand instinctively that he will never, ever talk about it with a single soul—not Rosalind, not me, not anybody.

Maybe I should call him or run back by his apartment. Not to make him open up if he doesn’t want to, just to be there with him.

Yet that feels like . . . too much. Like acknowledging his pain would be too intimate. How can we be this close and yet this distant? I want to bridge the gulf between us, but maybe that’s impossible.

The entire day, I wait for him to call. I don’t expect Jonah to vent about his family’s sorrows, but he might turn to me for companionship. For understanding.

He doesn’t phone that day. Or the next. No e-mail either.

Whatever hell Jonah is going through, he seems determined to go through it alone.

Twenty-seven

On Thursday, Jonah finally calls while I’m shopping at the supermarket.

Even after five days, I don’t get a hello. Instead he says, “Sorry I’ve been—off the radar.”

“That’s okay. Sometimes we all need some space.” That’s my invitation to him to tell me why he wanted his solitude.

The invitation is declined. He says only, “I had an idea.”

“Yeah?”

“For our next game.”

I’m standing in the produce aisle between the cucumbers and the persimmons, but just hearing his low, rough voice talk about our games makes my body respond instantly. Fire kindles deep inside, and I cradle the phone closer to my face so no one will overhear. “Tell me.”