When Quan discovers my new special interest, he surprises me by creating a butterfly garden on my tiny balcony. He puts pots of milkweed out and trains passion vine to twine around the railing. As spring turns to summer, my plants blossom with vibrant color, and the butterflies come. It’s just like in Mozambique.

I sit on my balcony for hours, basking in soft rays of sunlight and watching as butterflies dance about me. They’re not shy or afraid of me. Hummingbirds try to compete with them for nectar, and I laugh when my small butterflies battle against their larger opponents and win. Caterpillars hatch from tiny eggs and eat voraciously, chewing through each milkweed leaf in neat rows like when people eat corn on the cob typewriter-style. I name them all. Chompy, Biggolo, and Chewbacca, to name a few, and I bring Rock outside so he can hang out with us. I’m careful not to put him underneath the plants, though, and he’s grateful. He doesn’t want his new friends to poop on him.

Together, we observe as the monarch caterpillars form green chrysalises, darken, and then break free to reveal wings of dazzling orange and black. Later in the season, a different type of butterfly visits my passion vine. The Gulf fritillary is sometimes known as the passion butterfly. On the outside, its wings are plain brown and pearly white, but when they open up their wings, they’re the sweetest tangerine color. Passion butterfly caterpillars aren’t cute like my monarchs. They’re dark and spiky, almost poisonous-looking, and their chrysalises are camouflaged to look exactly like dried-up leaves. But when I poke one, it wiggles and squirms, very much alive.

It seems dead, but it’s just in transition.

I wonder if it’s a metaphor for me. Am I also metamorphosing and changing into something better?

FORTY-FOUR

Anna

IT’S SLOW, BUT I FEEL MYSELF HEALING. I CATCH UP ON MY bills, pay late fees, sign up to autopay as much as I can. I clean my apartment. It turns out that decorative black ring around the bathroom sink isn’t supposed to be there. (It’s mold.) I do the laundry. I start to use my exercise clothes for their intended purpose, but nothing drastic. I jog for ten minutes a day and increase the duration little by little. Now and then, Quan and I visit my mom, but we can’t drop in unexpectedly. At any given moment, chances are slim that she’s home. She’s not working as much as she used to, but she spends most of her time traveling with her friends. They’re currently planning a trip to Budapest.

As the seasons change again, I experience an odd sort of restlessness. It takes me a while to realize that I want to listen to music. But not classical music. I want something completely different. I want … jazz. For weeks, I listen to all the jazz I can find, everything from Louis Armstrong to John Coltrane to modern artists like Joey Alexander, and eventually, eventually, eventually, I am inspired by their musicality. Eventually, I want to play.

This is when I finally let myself pick up my violin again, but I do it carefully. I ease into it, only allowing myself to play scales at first. I rediscover my joy of patterns. I rebuild the calluses on my fingertips. I play simple songs from my childhood to see if I can.

FORTY-FIVE

Quan

TODAY, OVER A YEAR AFTER TURNING DOWN LVMH’S OFFER, Michael and I are meeting with their new head of acquisitions. Apparently, several women accused Paul Richard of sexual harassment and the company replaced him.

“I’m so happy to meet you both in person,” Angèlique Ikande says, smiling broadly as she shakes my hand and then Michael’s. With her white pantsuit and statuesque build, she looks like a corporate Wonder Woman.

“Likewise,” I say as I motion for her to join us at the restaurant table.

She folds her tall body into her seat and asks the waitress for a glass of sauvignon blanc before regarding us for a thoughtful moment. “I’d like you to know that I think my predecessor is a complete ass.”

Michael breaks into laughter, and I can’t help grinning as I lift my glass and drink to that statement of hers. I’ve been wondering about the purpose for this meeting, but Michael and I haven’t allowed ourselves to muse about it out loud. Paul Richard left a really bad taste in our mouths, and neither of us is over it. Angèlique, however, is totally different. She’s not stuck-up. Everything about her screams competence and honesty. It’s hard not to like her.

“You might not be aware of this,” she says, “but the MLA deal was my project, and Paul stuck his nose in it at the last minute. On behalf of LVMH, I’d like to sincerely apologize for his actions. But that’s not the only reason why I’m here. The first thing that I want to do as the new head of acquisitions is finish what I started. I’d like nothing better than to bring MLA under the LVMH umbrella—and that means both of you. To let you know how serious I am, I’m upping our original offer by twenty percent.”

Considering what the original offer was, twenty percent is a lot of money. I glance at Michael to gauge his response and smile when I find him doing the same thing to me.

“We’re going to need to discuss this,” I say.

“Of course,” she says.

I half expect her to get up and leave just like Paul Richard did, but she settles in and actually has lunch with us. She asks about our summer product line. She’s been keeping up with our social media accounts and is excited by the publicity we’ve been getting recently. To demonstrate how much she loves Michael’s designs, she shows us pictures of her kids on her phone. I don’t know if she did it on purpose or not, but it looks like her kids wear MLA exclusively and I can tell it pleases Michael. That’s the quickest way to my heart.

When lunch is over, we shake hands and part ways, promising to get in touch soon.

“So?” Michael asks as he drives us back to our building. “What are you thinking?”

“I think she’s prepared to up the offer by twenty-five percent, maybe thirty,” I say in a neutral tone, even though my heart is pounding so hard I feel like it might break through my ribs.

Michael’s wearing his sunglasses so I can’t see his eyes, but I still know what he’s thinking when he looks at me and then returns his attention to the road. “That’s not what I was asking.”

I shrug and try to play it cool, but a grin sneaks onto my mouth.

He must see it because he shoves my shoulder hard. “Asshole, you had me going there. You want to do it, right? It’ll really happen this time. If we want it to.”

“Okay, yeah. I want to do it. She gets us. Plus, she might be our number one customer.” I take my phone out to compulsively check my email, adding, “Still, I need to see this written out before …”

At the top of my inbox is a new email from Ikande, A. There’s a file attached. When I open it, I see it’s the contract that we worked on with Paul Richard, except now it clearly specifies PER THIS CONTRACT, QUAN DIEP WILL STAY ON AS CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER OF MICHAEL LARSEN APPAREL & CO., SUBSIDIARY OF LVMH MOËT HENNESSY LOUIS VUITTON.

“What?” Michael asks.

“She just sent us the contract,” I say. “It’s exactly as she said.”

“Shit. This is really going to happen now.” Michael swallows, and his face turns greenish as he grips the steering wheel like he might faint.