| eee AND I ARE BACK in her foyer. “I’ll meet you in my office in a half hour.” “OK,” I say as Evelyn heads down the corridor and out of sight. I take off my coat and put it in the closet. I should use this time to check in with Frankie. If I don’t reach out to update her soon, she'll track me down. I just have to decide how I’m going to handle it. How do I make sure she doesn’t try to wrestle this away from me? I think my only option is to pretend everything is going according to plan. My only plan is to lie. I breathe. One of my earliest memories from when I was a child was of my parents bringing me to Zuma Beach in Malibu. It was still springtime, I think. The water hadn’t yet warmed enough for comfort. My mom stayed on the sand, setting down our blanket and umbrella, while my dad scooped me up and ran with me down to the shoreline. I remember feeling weightless in his arms. And then he put my feet in the water, and I cried, telling him it was too cold. He agreed with me. It was cold. But then he said, “Just breathe in and out five times. And when you're done, I bet it won’t feel so cold.” I watched as he put his feet in. I watched him breathe. And then I put my feet back in and breathed with him. He was right, of course. It wasn’t so cold. After that, my dad would breathe with me anytime I was on the verge of tears. When I skinned my elbow, when my cousin called me an Oreo, when my mom said we couldn’t get a puppy, my father would sit and breathe with me. It still hurts, all these years later, to think about those moments. But for now, I keep breathing, right there in Evelyn’s foyer, centering myself as he taught me. And then, when I feel calm, I pick up my phone and dial Frankie. “Monique.” She answers on the second ring. “Tell me. How’s it going?”