Myron shook his head.

“Your friend loves you even more. With everyone else, you put up this façade so you can hide the crud and make them like you. But with real friends, you show them the crud-and that makes them care. When we get rid of the façade, we connect more. So why don’t we do that with everyone, Myron? I ask you.”

“I guess you’re going to tell me.”

“Damned if I know.” Lex sat back, took a deep sip, tilted his head in thought. “But here’s the thing: The façade is, by nature, a lie. That’s okay for the most part. But if you don’t open up to the one you love most-if you don’t show the flaws-you can’t connect. You are, in fact, keeping secrets. And those secrets fester and destroy.”

The door opened again. Four women and two men stumbled in, giggling and smiling and holding obscenely overpriced champagne in their hands.

“So what secrets are you keeping from Suzze?” Myron asked.

He just shook his head. “It’s a two-way street, mate.”

“So what secrets is Suzze keeping from you?”

Lex did not reply. He was looking across the room. Myron turned to follow his gaze.

And then he saw her.

Or at least he thought that he did. A blink of an eye across the VIP lounge, candlelit and smoky. Myron hadn’t seen her since that snowy night sixteen years ago, her belly swollen, the tears running down her cheeks, the blood flowing through her fingers. He hadn’t even kept tabs on them, but the last he had heard they were living somewhere in South America.

Their eyes met across the room for a second, no more. And as impossible as it seemed, Myron knew.

“Kitty?”

His voice was drowned out by the music, but Kitty did not hesitate. Her eyes widened a bit-fear maybe?-and then she spun. She ran for the door. Myron tried to get up fast, but the cushion-sucking sofa slowed him down. By the time he got to his feet, Kitty Bolitar-Myron’s sister-in-law, the woman who had taken away so much from him-was out the door.