The Apparent Trap

Chapters 1-2

Ezzie arrives early at the bar and chooses a seat near the front, deliberately picking a spot where her father will be able to see her when he looks up from the ceremony. She has dressed up for the occasion, trading her usual comfort for an outfit chosen to amuse him, and the choice sits with her as a reminder of how she normally moves through rooms like this one: unnoticed, part of the background, a woman who has learned to expect that no one's eyes will land on her. Tonight she has made herself visible on purpose, and the effort costs her something. The visibility is not natural to her. It is a performance of confidence she does not feel, staged for an audience of one, and every stitch of the outfit reminds her that she is pretending to be a woman who expects to be seen. She sits near the front so her father can find her easily, and the seat itself is a small act of hope, a bet that he will look up and search the room and be glad to find her there. The bet is not a comfortable one. It requires her to sit in the open, exposed to the room, and wait to be noticed by the one person whose attention she has decided to ask for.

Her phone rings and it is Georgia, calling to wish her luck. Ezzie takes the call and admits she is nervous about producing Carmen, and saying it out loud lets the anxiety settle deeper into her chest. The meeting's stakes press in on her more heavily than before she named them. She wanted the calm of a friendly voice and instead she has handed her nerves a microphone. The confession does not lighten anything. It gives the fear a shape and a name, and once named it takes up more room than it did when it was only a vague pressure behind her ribs. Georgia's kindness is real, but the call ends with Ezzie more aware than ever of what is riding on the meeting, and the awareness settles into her body like a weight she will have to carry into the room.

Then Lee Morgan sits down beside her and claims his drink was already there, and Ezzie finds herself confronting a stranger who clearly has no idea who she is. He does not recognize her. She is nobody to him, a woman occupying a seat he wanted, and she pushes back against the presumption of it. He responds by flirting with her, calling her adorable, and the word lands wrong. Ezzie challenges his assumptions rather than melting into the easy role of the grateful flirt, refusing to be handled by a man who thinks a compliment is a key that opens any door. She does not soften when he smiles. She does not laugh at the line about the drink. She holds her ground and makes him answer for the assumption that her seat was his to claim, and the pushback is its own small rebellion against a lifetime of yielding space to men who never noticed her at all.

What she does not expect is his honesty. Lee admits he may have worked so hard at being likable that he forgot how to actually be likable, and the confession unsettles her because it does not fit the script she was arguing against. Ezzie confronts him about hiding behind his television charisma, and instead of defending himself, he accepts the criticism. He does not flinch or counterpunch. He simply agrees, and his willingness to take the hit disarms her more effectively than any charm could have. The agreement is disorienting. She came armed for an argument and found a man willing to concede the point, and the concession leaves her without an opponent and without her defenses. She had expected him to be the smooth television personality who deflects everything with a grin, and instead he stands there and lets her criticism land, and the honesty of it undoes her more thoroughly than flirtation ever could.

Lee proposes that both of them are trapped in old boxes, and the idea catches Ezzie off guard. She has spent years accepting a version of herself, the unflirtable one, the woman who does not get noticed, and he is suggesting she climbed into that box too early and then stayed. She considers it. She does not dismiss it. The idea is uncomfortable because it is plausible. She has told herself the box was built around her by other people, and Lee is suggesting she had a hand in building it and has kept the door closed from the inside. She turns the thought over and cannot immediately find the flaw in it, and the inability to dismiss it is its own kind of disturbance. When she admits she is not hating being flirted with, the words give Lee encouragement and weaken her own defenses at the same time, and she knows it as she says it. The admission is a crack in the box, and she feels the air coming through it even as she regrets opening it.

He asks her out for another drink. She refuses, but only because she is meeting a colleague, and the reason matters: it is not that she is uninterested. Lee hears the difference and presses his advantage, asking for her number and promising a proper date. The promise pushes her toward yes against her better judgment, and she gives it, or gives in, and the ground beneath her safe habits starts to tilt. She knows she is handing over something she usually keeps guarded, and she does it anyway, and the doing of it feels like stepping off a curb she did not see. The tilt is not unpleasant. It is the sensation of a rule being broken, and she breaks it with her eyes open, aware that she is trading the safety of invisibility for something she cannot yet name.

Then Lee touches her lip and nearly kisses her, and Ezzie wants it. She wants to abandon the careful, invisible version of herself and take the risk, and the wanting is its own kind of vertigo. But Lee abruptly pulls away and flees with an apology, and Ezzie is left at the bar shocked and hurt, replaying the last thirty seconds for a mistake she cannot find, unsure what she did wrong or whether she did anything at all. The flight is so sudden that it leaves no time to protest or to ask. One moment he is close enough to kiss and the next he is gone, and she is sitting alone with her heart still racing and no explanation to slow it down. She goes over the seconds again and again, hunting for the misstep, and finds nothing she can point to, and the absence of a cause is worse than a cause would be. She is left holding the wanting and the rejection at the same time, and neither of them makes sense without the other.

Carmen arrives for the meeting, and Ezzie has to swallow her confusion whole and introduce herself to the new coanchor as though nothing has happened. The professional mask goes on over the wreckage of the last few minutes, and the contrast between what she is feeling and what she must perform is brutal. She shakes Carmen's hand and says the right words and feels the whole of the last half hour pressing against the inside of her skull, and none of it shows. The mask is necessary and it is also a lie, and she wears it while the confusion churns underneath, and the effort of the performance leaves her exhausted before the meeting has even begun.

Two weeks later Ezzie walks to work in a bad mood, unable to stop replaying the night at the bar. The loop runs whether she wants it to or not, and threaded through it is the dread of seeing Lee again, of finding out what that flight meant and whether she will have to pretend it never happened. The two weeks have not dulled the memory. They have polished it, and she turns it over on the walk to work the way she has turned it over every morning since, examining the same seconds for a meaning that has not yet appeared. The dread is specific: she does not know what she will say to him or what he will say to her, and the not knowing has become a low hum under everything else she does.

She asks her father whether she sells herself short, and his answer is unconditional praise. He tells her she is wonderful, that she should never doubt herself, and the warmth of it leaves her without the honest answer she actually needs. She wanted a mirror and got a cheerleader, and the question stays open because he will not look at it squarely. The praise is generous and it is also a deflection, and she can feel the difference even as she accepts the hug that comes with it. She asked a question that required him to look at her clearly, and he answered with affection instead of sight, and the affection, warm as it is, leaves her exactly where she started.

So Ezzie tries to turn the question on him, suggesting that he should aim higher too, that maybe he is the one settling. Her father deflects with a hug and restarts the movie, and the conversation closes the way it always does, with affection used as a door held politely shut. Ezzie is left holding her question and his, neither of them answered, the television filling the silence where the truth might have gone. The movie restarts and the moment passes and she sits with both questions in her lap, unable to put either of them down, and the screen lights the room while the silence does the work of a closed door.

Ezzie wants Georgia to let go of her grudge against Lee, but Georgia refuses. She insists that Lee owes Ezzie an explanation, and the demand lodges in Ezzie like a splinter. The confrontation costs Ezzie her peace of mind; instead of settling anything, it leaves her turning the problem over, caught between Georgia's certainty that something is owed and her own reluctance to pursue it. Georgia will not be moved, and her certainty is a pressure Ezzie cannot relieve, and the splinter stays where it is, working its way deeper every time Ezzie thinks about it.

Carmen Takes Over

Before the tension can resolve, Carmen interrupts Georgia's dressing room to ask Ezzie to review the wildfire segment questions. The request is framed as a need but delivered as an assertion of control, and it pulls Ezzie physically away from Georgia's interrogation. Ezzie agrees to go over the scripts with Carmen, sacrificing the work she had already prepared and accepting Carmen's commandeering approach rather than pushing back. The concession costs her more than time: it hands Carmen the initiative at the exact moment Ezzie needed to hold her ground. She leaves Georgia's dressing room with the grudge still unresolved and walks into Carmen's request already at a disadvantage, and the disadvantage compounds with every step she takes toward the review.

Carmen then redirects the wildfire segment away from Ezzie's planned questions. What Ezzie had designed as the spine of the segment gets set aside, and Carmen's competitiveness surfaces plainly. She is willing to override Ezzie's producing judgment, and Ezzie feels the demotion in real time, her authority thinning with every substitution Carmen proposes. The questions Ezzie built the segment around are replaced one by one, and each replacement is a small demonstration of who is actually in charge, and Ezzie watches her own work being dismantled and does not stop it.

Banana Bread at the Desk

Back at her desk, Ezzie finds her father, Mark, waiting with banana bread. The visit interrupts her work discussion with Carmen, and the timing could hardly be worse. Carmen recognizes Mark as the creator of the Halevi Model, and her professional guardedness evaporates on the spot. She fawns over him with unguarded enthusiasm, and the two of them shake hands excessively and trade compliments until Ezzie feels like an outsider at her own desk, watching a weather-nerd fan club form without her. The shift in Carmen is total. The woman who was overriding Ezzie's judgment minutes ago is now beaming at Ezzie's father, and the beaming leaves Ezzie on the outside of a conversation happening at her own desk.

Carmen asks Mark for his number, ostensibly to discuss wildfires and a potential interview, and they exchange contacts. The exchange unsettles Ezzie; something about the speed of it, the eagerness, sits wrong. Mark leaves after hugging Ezzie and promising to see her tonight, and Ezzie is left questioning the odd interaction. Then she notices Carmen blushing, and suspicion takes root: Carmen's interest in her father may not be purely meteorological. The blush is the detail that does not fit the professional explanation, and once Ezzie sees it she cannot unsee it, and the suspicion settles in and stays.

Lee Morgan Arrives

Lee Morgan approaches Carmen and makes awkward small talk about his cooking segment, ignoring Ezzie entirely. When Ezzie is introduced, Lee fails to recognize her. The blankness confirms her worst fear: he never knew who she was. All the history she has been carrying, the grudge Georgia refuses to drop, the explanation supposedly owed, turns out to rest on a man who does not even remember her face. Lee asks Carmen to catch up after the show, and Carmen gives him a brush-off while Ezzie watches, taking in every detail of the dismissal.

Chapters 3-5

Ezzie makes her decision in the quiet aftermath of what she has learned: she will keep Lee and Carmen's secret. She sits with the knowledge and turns it over until the shape of a plan emerges, and the plan is silence. She reasons that if Carmen's focus is fractured by outside pressure, her performance will suffer, and Ezzie wants Carmen sharp and successful. A distracted Carmen is a weaker Carmen, and a weaker Carmen is a problem for the show and for everyone around her. Staying silent and helping Carmen succeed becomes her plan, a choice that puts her squarely in the middle of a situation she never asked for. She does not stumble into the decision. She makes it deliberately, weighing the cost against the outcome she wants, and she accepts the cost. The choice places her inside the secret rather than outside it, and once she is inside, there is no clean way back out.

Carmen comes to Ezzie directly, asking for help handling Lee. She does not want the complication of outside voices or interference, and she accepts Ezzie's proposal to keep the relationship private. The request is not casual. Carmen is asking Ezzie to stand between her and the noise, to manage the situation so that Carmen does not have to manage it herself. The agreement is practical on its surface, but it binds the two women together in a shared confidence that changes the texture of their working relationship. What was once a professional partnership now carries an obligation underneath it, an understanding that runs beneath every conversation they have. They are no longer only colleagues. They are custodians of the same secret, and that custody ties them to each other whether they want it to or not.

Ezzie gives Carmen her word. She will not schedule segments with Lee, and she will keep the secret even from Georgia. That last promise costs her something real, because Ezzie's usual openness with Georgia is the bedrock of their partnership, and now there is a locked door between them. Georgia is the person Ezzie tells everything to, the one who knows the shape of Ezzie's days before Ezzie has finished describing them. Withholding this from Georgia is not a small omission. It is a fracture in the foundation of the thing Ezzie relies on most. Ezzie knows what she is giving up, and she gives it up anyway. She does not pretend the promise is free. She counts the cost and pays it, and the paying changes her.

What Ezzie wants now is bigger than protecting a secret. She commits to helping Carmen prove herself beyond hosting duties, to build her into a shoo-in for the Olympics and the fill-in roles that come with it. The goal gives Ezzie direction and purpose, a way to turn an awkward situation into a professional win for both of them. Protecting the secret is the floor, not the ceiling. Ezzie wants Carmen elevated, positioned, made undeniable, because a Carmen who is indispensable is a Carmen whose success reflects on Ezzie and whose complications stay contained. The ambition is genuine and it is also strategic, and Ezzie does not separate the two. She has found a way to make her silence productive, to convert an uncomfortable position into a campaign.

Ezzie gets approval for a Sweden travel assignment. The trip is the vehicle for her plan: it will make Carmen, and by extension Ezzie herself, indispensable for Olympics coverage. The approval is the first real piece of the plan falling into place, the moment the abstract becomes concrete. When she tells Carmen the news, it is a moment of shared ambition, the two of them aligned on a future they are building together. For that moment the secret is not a burden but a bond, and the two women stand on the same side of something they both want. Ezzie brings the news like a gift, and Carmen receives it like one, and the alignment between them feels, briefly, like the whole point.

Carmen accepts the Sweden opportunity. She agrees to trust Ezzie's planning and sets her sights on becoming indispensable for Olympics coverage. The trust is a gift and a weight at once, because Ezzie now carries responsibility for Carmen's trajectory as well as her own. Carmen has handed Ezzie the reins and said, in effect, I believe you know where we are going. That belief is flattering and it is heavy. If the plan works, both of them rise. If it fails, Ezzie is the one who steered them wrong, and she will have spent her credibility on a bet she chose to make. She accepts the weight because she asked for it, and because the alternative, doing nothing, was never really an option she could live with.

Then the day delivers a small wound. Ezzie watches Lee flirt with food stylist Ellen. She wants to ignore him, to be above it, but the scene works on her. It intensifies her insecurity and her resentment, a reminder that Lee's attention moves easily and that Ezzie's feelings are not nearly as tidy as she wants them to be. She tells herself she does not care, and the telling is evidence that she does. Watching him turn his charm on someone else in the middle of the studio, in plain view, makes the triangle she has been trying to manage feel less like a puzzle she can solve and more like a weather system she is standing in. The resentment is not only about Lee. It is about the gap between the control she projects and the mess she actually feels.

At home, Ezzie's father reveals he went on a date. He explains that he wanted to aim higher after Ezzie's earlier advice, and the news unsettles her comfortable routine. The household she thought she understood has shifted under her feet, and the change is her own doing. She gave him the advice. She encouraged him to reach for more. Now the reaching has happened, and it has produced a fact she was not prepared for, and she has no one to blame but herself. The home that was supposed to be the stable part of her life turns out to be as movable as everything else, and she is the one who moved it.

Ezzie declines to hear the details. She wants to preserve their usual closeness, and hearing about the woman would break the spell of the familiar. She hides her unease by starting the movie, steering them back to the ritual they know. If she does not learn the woman's name, the date remains an abstraction, and the abstraction can be kept at a distance. The movie is the tool she uses to close the subject without appearing to close it, and her father, perhaps understanding more than she says, lets her. They settle into the ritual, and the ritual holds, but only because Ezzie has decided not to look at what is changing.

Back at the studio, Ezzie sees Lee lingering to watch Carmen on set. She wants to avoid him, but his presence forces her to confront her feelings whether she likes it or not. The triangle is no longer abstract; it is standing in the room with her. Lee watching Carmen is a sight Ezzie cannot unsee, and it tells her something about where his attention actually lives. She has been managing the situation from a distance, arranging and promising and planning, and here is the situation in the flesh, reminding her that she is not above it. Her feelings do not consult her plans. They simply arrive.

Ezzie walks out of the studio. She decides to focus on work and Sweden rather than Lee, though she admits to herself that ignoring him is a bonus. The exit is a small act of self-protection, and it sets her resolve. She does not confront him and she does not linger. She removes herself, and the removal is a choice she makes on purpose. Work is the direction she can control, Sweden is the future she can build, and Lee is the variable she can decline to solve. The admission that ignoring him is a bonus is the most honest thing she tells herself all day.

She wakes in a good mood and rides a strong show, believing everything is going right. The confidence is genuine and earned in the moment, and it sets her up for a fall she cannot see coming. The morning has the texture of a day when the plan is working. The show runs well, the pieces fit, and Ezzie allows herself to believe that the machinery she has built is holding. The belief is not foolish. It is simply premature, and the recap of the day is about to turn.

Georgia nails a confrontational live interview with the transportation secretary over air traffic control strikes. The segment raises the show's momentum, and Ezzie feels the day building in their favor. Georgia at her best is a force, and the interview is Georgia at her best, pressing and precise and unafraid. The studio feels the lift. Ezzie feels it too, and the feeling compounds with everything else that has gone right.

Carmen, Jenny, and Tate score a viral moment with a kindergarten dance phenom. The clip lands, the energy in the studio lifts, and Ezzie's sense of success compounds. The moment is the kind of thing that cannot be planned and cannot be faked, and it arrives on a day that was already going well. The studio is loud with the pleasure of it. Ezzie watches the numbers and the laughter and lets herself enjoy the accumulation.

Ezzie and Carmen's pretaped segment with reuniting nineties actors moves director Gil to tears. The reaction reinforces Ezzie's confidence; everything she touches today seems to turn to gold. Gil does not cry easily, and his tears are a verdict. The segment works. The day works. Ezzie is running a streak, and the streak feels like proof that her judgment is sound and her plan is sound and the ground beneath her is solid.

Then the show ends, and Ezzie turns to Georgia. She makes a small mistake, and the day's winning streak is suddenly at risk. The mistake is small, the kind of thing that would not matter on an ordinary day, but this is not an ordinary day. This is a day when everything has gone right, and the small mistake lands on the streak like a crack in glass. Ezzie feels the shift immediately, the way a good day can turn on a single wrong word.

Ezzie turns to Georgia to celebrate the day going right, tempting fate with her relief that the interview has gone smoothly. The moment of satisfaction sets up the disruption that follows. She says the thing you say when you believe the danger has passed. She names the smoothness out loud, and naming it is the mistake, because the day is not finished with her yet.

Ezzie opens Carmen's office door while looking at her phone, intending to discuss the interview. She discovers her father embracing Carmen. The door opens on the last thing she expected, and the image takes a moment to resolve into meaning. Her father. Carmen. The embrace is not ambiguous. It is not a greeting or a courtesy. It is the embrace of two people who have chosen each other, and Ezzie is standing in the doorway with her phone in her hand and the day collapsing around her.

Mark and Carmen jump apart when they are spotted, wanting to hide the relationship, but their embarrassment confirms it to Ezzie. The jumping apart is the confession. If they had stayed still, there might have been a story. Instead there is a flinch, and the flinch tells Ezzie everything. They wanted the relationship hidden, and the hiding has failed in the most direct way possible.

Mark grabs Ezzie's arm to stop her from leaving, wanting to explain, and reveals that his recent date was with Carmen. He will not let her walk out with the wrong idea, though the right idea is not much better. The date he mentioned at home, the date she declined to hear about, the date she steered around with a movie, was Carmen. The abstraction she preserved by not asking has a name, and the name is the one she least wanted to hear.

Mark confesses in front of Carmen that he really likes her, wanting honesty. The admission surprises Carmen into an awestruck silence. He says it plainly, in front of both women, without hedging. The honesty is meant for Ezzie and it is also meant for Carmen, and Carmen receives it as the thing it is. She goes quiet, struck, the way people go quiet when something they hoped for is said out loud in front of a witness.

Carmen takes Mark's hand and admits she feels it too, wanting to acknowledge the relationship. The gesture deepens Ezzie's shock. Carmen does not deflect or minimize. She takes his hand and says the feeling is mutual, and the saying of it in front of Ezzie makes the relationship real in a way the embrace alone did not. Ezzie is now not only the discoverer but the audience, and the two of them are performing their honesty for her whether they mean to or not.

Ezzie flashes back to Mark squeezing her dying mother's hand, wanting to protect him, and fears an inevitable heartbreak. The memory arrives unbidden and it reframes everything.

Chapters 6-8

Ezzie decides to keep Carmen's secret about dating her father, a choice she makes out of loyalty to a confidence she was trusted with. The secret settles on her immediately, heavy and constant, and it strains her ability to confide in Georgia the way she normally would. What should be an easy friendship becomes guarded, because Ezzie is carrying something she cannot say out loud, and the weight of it follows her through the days that follow. Every ordinary conversation with Georgia becomes a test of what she can safely reveal, and the answer is always nothing, so she holds back and feels the distance grow between them even as she keeps her word to Carmen.

Lee confronts Ezzie in a private room, wanting to know why she hid the fact that her father is Mark. He asks directly because the omission has been sitting with him, and he wants an explanation rather than an excuse. Ezzie admits she assumed he would not remember her, that she was a face he had long since forgotten, and that assumption is what she offers him now. The admission reveals how small she believed her place in his memory to be, and it changes the shape of the conversation from an accusation into something more honest. What began as a demand for answers becomes a confession of her own low estimate of herself, and the honesty of it takes the edge off the confrontation.

Lee then reveals he learned about the relationship from Carmen herself, and from there he looked up Mark, following the thread until he discovered that Mark is Ezzie's father. He explains this because he wants her to understand that the revelation was not something she handed him, that he found it on his own. That distinction matters, and it shifts the ground between them. He is not asking for gossip. He is asking why she let him walk around without the full picture. The point he presses is that the truth came to him through his own investigation, not through any slip of hers, and that she had the chance to tell him and chose silence instead.

Lee admits he has no one else to talk to about his concerns, and the honesty of it is disarming. He says it because the worry has nowhere else to go, and Ezzie is the only person who shares the same stake in what is happening. The confession draws her into an uneasy alliance despite her loyalty to Carmen, which pulls one way while Lee stands in front of her with nowhere else to put what he is carrying. The two of them are bound together now by a worry they did not choose to share. Neither of them asked for this partnership, and neither of them can walk away from it without leaving the other alone with a fear too large to hold.

Ezzie and Lee discover they share the same fear that Carmen and Mark's relationship will inevitably hurt someone. Neither of them can name who will be wounded first, but the certainty is there in both of them, and the recognition is uncomfortable because it makes their positions harder to dismiss. They are not guessing at trouble. They are watching it approach, and now they know they are watching it together. The shared fear does not comfort either of them. It only confirms that the dread each has been carrying alone is real, and that neither can talk the other out of it.

Lee confesses he cannot risk damaging his fragile trust with Carmen by speaking up, because whatever closeness he has with her is new and breakable. He says it because he will not be the one to shatter it by voicing an objection, and that confession leaves them at an impasse. Ezzie cannot act without betraying Carmen's confidence, and Lee will not act without losing Carmen's trust. Between the two of them, there is no move that does not cost something. Every option they can see requires one of them to sacrifice the very thing that brought them into this conversation, and so they sit with the impossibility of it rather than choose a loss.

Ezzie admits her guilt that her mother's death left her father alone and that she has held him back, revealing her vulnerability to Lee in the middle of a conversation that began as an accusation. She says it because the guilt has been pressing on her, and because Lee has just shown her his own helplessness. The admission reframes everything. Her stake in her father's happiness is not abstract. It is tangled up in grief and in the belief that she is the reason he has been lonely. What started as a confrontation over a hidden fact becomes a window into the guilt she has been carrying, and Lee, who came in demanding answers, finds himself receiving something far more personal than an explanation.

Lee and Ezzie decide they cannot directly tell their parents anything and must let the relationship run its course, whatever that course turns out to be. They reach the decision because every direct move they considered would cost one of them something they cannot afford to lose. Letting it run does not mean doing nothing, though, and that is where the conversation turns. The decision gives them a boundary, and the boundary makes room for what comes next. Having ruled out the direct approach, they find themselves free to consider indirect ones, and the talk moves from what they cannot do to what they might.

Ezzie proposes a "reverse Parent Trap" scheme to nudge Mark and Carmen into seeing their incompatibility themselves. She offers it because letting the relationship run feels too passive when they both believe someone will get hurt, and a scheme gives her worry somewhere to go. Instead of bringing two people together, they will gently push two people toward the realization that they do not fit. The idea is clever enough to sound possible, and that is what makes it dangerous. It gives shape to their helplessness, and a shape is easier to trust than it should be, which is exactly why the plan carries risk they cannot yet see.

Lee agrees to join Ezzie's scheme, shaking on their secret pact and agreeing to reconvene after his Friday segment. He agrees because the alliance is the only outlet his concern has, and because Ezzie has given him something to do besides worry. The pact is sealed, and for the moment it gives them both somewhere to put their fear. It is not a solution. It is a plan, and a plan is something to hold onto. The handshake binds them to each other as much as to the scheme, and both of them walk away with the first sense of direction they have had since the conversation began.

Ezzie spends the next few days avoiding her father and privately struggling to devise a workable plan. She keeps her distance because nothing in her face or her manner can be allowed to give away what she knows and what she is plotting. Privately, ideas come and go, and most of them fail before they are even spoken aloud. The avoidance costs her, but the planning costs her more, and neither one leaves her any peace. Every meal skipped and every conversation dodged adds to the strain, and the hours she spends turning ideas over in her head yield nothing she can use, so she arrives at the end of each day more tired and no closer to an answer.

Ezzie rejects multiple failed scheme ideas before settling on a plan by Friday, discarding each one as it collapses under its own flaws. She keeps working because the deadline she and Lee set is approaching, and because quitting would mean admitting the worry has no outlet at all. By Friday she finally settles on something she believes can work. The plan is the first thing in days that feels like forward motion, and she brings it to Lee. Each rejected idea takes something out of her, but the one she keeps feels solid enough to carry, and she arrives at the meeting with Lee holding the first real hope she has had all week.

Lee reacts with incredulity when Ezzie's plan appears to involve giving her father stomach problems, questioning her judgment outright. He reacts that way because the scheme that was supposed to be clever now looks reckless, and because he cannot tell whether she has thought this through. The question hanging between them is whether Ezzie's guilt has pushed her toward something she cannot control. The pact they shook on is suddenly tested, and neither of them knows yet what that means. His doubt lands hard, and for a moment the alliance they built seems as fragile as the trust Lee was afraid to risk with Carmen.

Ezzie pitches her plan with the confidence of someone who has finally found a pressure point: she will double Carmen's bean salad order so that her father, with his notoriously sensitive stomach, will eat it and suffer the consequences, hopefully souring the relationship. Lee immediately pushes back, calling the scheme shallow and low-stakes, the kind of petty sabotage that hardly seems worth the effort. But Ezzie's mind is made up, and despite his skepticism, Lee agrees to the bean-salad scheme, committing himself as her partner in the breakup plot. The two of them are now in it together, however dubious the plan. Lee's objections do not survive her certainty, and he signs on to a scheme he plainly doubts, which makes his commitment a matter of loyalty rather than belief.

Ezzie places the doubled salad order under the male alias "Eddie" to avoid suspicion, and the plan lurches into motion. In the process, Lee reveals his full name is Leonardo Morgan and explains that he goes by Lee, a detail that leaves Ezzie curious about his reasons for shortening it. That curiosity takes over. Ezzie calls Lee after googling his name and discovers a murderer named Leonardo Morgan, and instead of recoiling, the call turns personal, drawing the two of them closer. The shared secret of the name, and the dark coincidence attached to it, becomes a strange intimacy between them. What might have been a reason to pull back becomes instead a reason to keep talking, and the call stretches on past the point where either of them expected it to end.

Then the bean-salad plan collapses. Ezzie reports to Lee that it failed because Carmen revealed she takes Gas-X before eating beans and even gave one to Mark. The sabotage is neutralized before it ever had a chance to work. Ezzie confronts her father about the beans and his sensitive stomach, but Carmen deflects by joking about her own gas, and the couple's affectionate banter leaves Ezzie unsettled. The easy warmth between her father and Carmen is exactly what she cannot stand, and her attempt to drive a wedge between them has only given her a front-row seat to their closeness. The plan that was supposed to push them apart has instead handed her proof of how well they fit, and the failure sits with her long after the conversation ends.

Lee admits the bean plan was a bad idea and promises a better plan, but he refuses to share it, citing plausible deniability and calling Ezzie a bad actor. The withholding stings. Ezzie hangs up on Lee, hardening herself against their camaraderie because she fears the connection isn't real. Whatever closeness the name revelation built, she now treats with suspicion, protecting herself before she can be hurt. The call ends badly, and Ezzie is left with the sense that the alliance she thought they had built may have been one-sided all along, so she pulls back before she can be disappointed again.

At work, Sarah tasks Ezzie with logistics for the Thanksgiving parade live shot, assigning Carmen to interview parade participants on the ground. Then Sarah reveals the Sweden trip will be extended by two days and that Carmen suggested adding Ezzie's father to give climate context on location. The news horrifies Ezzie at the prospect of being a third wheel, trailing her father and Carmen through a foreign country while they play a couple. Sarah announces that Lee Morgan will join the Sweden trip for culinary segments, and Ezzie's attempt to have another producer take over is overruled. Sarah tells Ezzie she must oversee the extra culinary segments herself, and Ezzie swallows her frustration to protect her career. Every piece of the assignment lands on her at once, and she absorbs each one without protest because objecting would cost her more than complying.

Sarah explains that if Carmen becomes permanent, Ezzie's profile will rise, and Ezzie resolves to focus on her own success despite the nightmare configuration of people. The calculation is clear: Carmen's ascent, however personally unbearable, could lift Ezzie too. Ezzie accepts the expanded assignment and thanks Sarah for her confidence, deciding she can't let personal distractions derail her. She agrees to start calling interview subjects that week to develop ideas for showcasing rural Swedish cuisine beyond typical fika and moose stories. The trip is no longer just a threat to her peace of mind; it is a professional opportunity she intends to claim, even with her father, Carmen, and Lee all along for the ride. She leaves the conversation with a plan for her own advancement, determined that the personal complications will not be the thing that defines the trip.

Chapters 9-11

Ezzie spends the day of the parade avoiding Lee. After learning he is joining the Sweden trip, she wants distance, and she keeps her guard up while staying alert for whatever plan he is rumored to be hatching. The vigilance costs her: she is watching him instead of enjoying the event, and the day becomes an exercise in managing proximity rather than celebration. Every float and marching band that passes becomes secondary to the question of where Lee is standing, who he is talking to, and what he might be arranging behind the scenes. She keeps her body angled away from him in the crowd, chooses her positions so that there are always people between them, and scans for him almost without meaning to. The parade itself blurs past her, a wash of color and noise she cannot settle into, because her attention is pinned on the man she does not trust. By the time the event ends, she has not enjoyed it, and she knows the fault is partly her own. The distance she wanted has been maintained, but the cost is a day she cannot get back, spent in a state of watchfulness instead of pleasure.

The First Live Segment

Carmen and Lee perform their first live segment together, on hot chocolate. Ezzie watches with relief as they stay professional on camera. The relief matters because Ezzie has been bracing for disaster, and the segment going smoothly means the project can survive Lee's presence. She has spent the days leading up to the broadcast imagining the ways it could go wrong: a awkward pause, a slipped remark, a moment where Carmen's feelings about her father show through and the whole thing curdles on air. None of that happens. Carmen holds her composure, Lee plays the part of the charming guest, and the hot chocolate steams between them as if the two of them had been working together for years. Carmen's composure on camera is a small victory, but it does not resolve the larger question of how she feels about working with him. The segment proves that the project can absorb Lee. It proves nothing about whether Carmen can.

Afterward, Ezzie asks Carmen how it felt to work with Lee. Carmen admits it was hard but also a little nice. The admission reveals her uncertainty about her father. She is not simply resentful or simply charmed; she is caught between the two, and she says so. The honesty of it is what strikes Ezzie: Carmen does not pretend to a single clean feeling, because she does not have one. Working beside Lee was difficult, and it was also, in some way she seems almost embarrassed to name, pleasant. Both things are true at once, and Carmen lets them both stand. Ezzie responds by offering reassurance about Sweden, promising multiple takes and control of the edits so that Carmen's nerves will not reach the final cut. The promise is practical, but it is also a way of protecting Carmen from exposure, and it shows how much Ezzie has invested in making the trip work for her. She is not only managing a production. She is trying to build a buffer around Carmen, a space in which Carmen can be nervous and uncertain without the world seeing it, and the offer of control over the edits is really an offer of shelter.

The Thanksgiving Invitation

Lee invites Ezzie and her father to Thanksgiving dinner. Ezzie feels trapped into accepting when Carmen enthusiastically endorses the idea. The invitation is not a casual gesture; it is a move, and Carmen's enthusiasm closes off Ezzie's escape route. Ezzie cannot refuse without disappointing Carmen, and she cannot accept without walking into whatever Lee is planning. She accepts, and the trap closes. The speed of it is what leaves her breathless: one moment she is standing at the edge of a conversation, and the next she has agreed to bring her father to Lee's table on a holiday, with Carmen beaming at the idea and no graceful way back out. She knows she has been outmaneuvered, and she knows that Carmen, whether she realizes it or not, was the instrument of it.

Ezzie confronts Lee about the ambush. Lee does not deny it. He reveals his plan to use staged scenarios, starting with Thanksgiving, to expose the age gap between Carmen and her father. The confession is startling in its candor. Lee is not hiding his manipulation; he is announcing it, which makes him harder to resist because he seems to have nothing to conceal. He lays out the logic as though it were a menu: the dinner, the conversation, the small engineered moments that will make the difference in age plain to everyone at the table. The stakes are clear: Lee intends to use the holiday to drive a wedge between Carmen and her father, and Ezzie has just agreed to bring her father to the table. She came to him expecting denials and instead received a blueprint, and the honesty of it disarms her in a way that a lie would not have.

Lee raises the subject of Sweden. Ezzie insists they must not jeopardize the shoot, while Lee argues they need to plan how to prevent romance on the trip. The disagreement is about method as much as goal. Ezzie wants to protect the production; Lee wants to manage Carmen's personal life. Neither of them is willing to concede, and the conversation ends without resolution, leaving the trip and the Thanksgiving dinner both unresolved. They talk past each other, each certain of the priority the other has wrong, and when it ends nothing has been settled. The dinner is still coming. The trip is still coming. And Ezzie walks away with both of them hanging over her.

Four Flights Up

Ezzie and her father climb four flights to Lee's apartment. The climb is a small ordeal, and Ezzie privately chafes that her father happily abandoned their Chinese-food tradition. The detail stings because it shows how easily her father has been drawn into Lee's orbit. The tradition was theirs, and he gave it up without much apparent regret. She thinks about the years of it, the same meal, the same quiet ritual, and she feels the loss of it more than she says. Her father climbs the stairs ahead of her without complaint, cheerful about the evening to come, and his cheerfulness is its own small wound. Ezzie feels the loss of it more than she says.

Inside, Ezzie finds Lee cooking in his kitchen and compliments the meal. Lee admits he misses the clarity of working the line. The admission is disarming. It suggests that Lee's scheming is not pure confidence but partly a way of filling a void left by the kitchen, where the work was clear and the hierarchy was simple. For a moment he seems less like a manipulator and more like a man who misses the certainty of a professional kitchen. He speaks about the line with something like longing, and Ezzie, against her will, recognizes the feeling. She knows what it is to miss a place where the rules were legible. The recognition does not excuse him, but it complicates him, and complication is the last thing she wants.

Lee has Ezzie's father open the wine to test his physical competence. The test is meant to expose weakness, but the older man succeeds easily and the plan fizzles. The failure is small but telling: Lee's staged scenarios do not always land, and Ezzie's father is more capable than Lee expected. The cork comes out cleanly, the wine is poured, and the moment Lee had designed to reveal frailty reveals nothing at all. The evening's first test produces no evidence for Lee's case, and Ezzie takes a small, private satisfaction in watching the plan fail.

At the Table

Lee toasts the table. Ezzie notices Carmen softening toward him while feeling like the outsider in her own family. The toast is a performance of warmth, and it works on Carmen. Ezzie watches the softening with unease, because it means Lee is gaining ground, and she feels displaced, as though her place in the family is being quietly reassigned. She sits with her glass raised and watches Carmen's face open toward Lee, and the openness is worse than hostility would have been. Hostility she could have worked with. This, she cannot.

Lee steers the conversation to old movies to highlight the generational gap. The move is transparent, but it backfires when Carmen remarks that she missed movies as a child. The remark dims his triumph. Instead of exposing a gap between Carmen and her father, it reveals something about Carmen's childhood that does not fit Lee's narrative. Lee's scheme depends on legible differences, and Carmen's comment muddies them. For a moment the table goes quiet in a way Lee did not plan, and Ezzie sees the calculation stall.

Lee serves dinner, including BLT-style mashed potatoes. Ezzie silently concedes they are the best she has ever eaten. The concession is private and grudging, but it is real. Lee's competence in the kitchen is not a pose, and Ezzie cannot pretend otherwise even as she resents him. She takes a second bite without meaning to, and the second bite is its own admission.

Lee brings out Trivial Pursuit as his next staged test. Ezzie spots a magazine cover on sugar baby culture and confirms his unsubtle scheming. The magazine is a prop, and its presence makes Lee's intentions plain. He is not merely hosting a holiday dinner; he is building a case, and the game is the next exhibit. The cover sits there on the table, glossy and obvious, and Ezzie understands that the evening has a script and she is watching it being performed.

Ezzie deliberately sits away from Lee, determined not to be drawn in by his charm as the game begins. The choice is a small act of resistance. She cannot stop the dinner or the game, but she can control where she sits, and she does, putting distance between herself and the man who is trying to rearrange her family. She takes the chair farthest from him and keeps her eyes on her own cards.

Ezzie notices the Trivial Pursuit questions are outdated, and the realization needles at her until she confronts Lee in the kitchen. She wants him to admit the game is rigged, and the demand costs her the pretense of not caring about the scheme. Up to this point she has been able to stand apart from it, observing with detached amusement, but naming the trick aloud makes her a participant. She follows him into the kitchen and says it plainly, and the saying of it changes her position. She is no longer a spectator. She is in it.

Lee defends the old game board, wanting to keep the plan working, and his defense reveals to Ezzie that he is deliberately using obsolete questions to frustrate Carmen. The game is not a game at all but a tool, and Lee is wielding it with intent. Ezzie sees the calculation behind the harmless-looking box and understands that Lee has been engineering Carmen's discomfort question by question. He does not apologize. He explains, as though the explanation were a kindness, and Ezzie sees the whole architecture of the evening at once.

Ezzie returns to the game and watches Carmen, wanting Carmen to feel the age gap. She gets what she wants. Carmen grows visibly frustrated as Lee's commentary makes the generational divide obvious, each remark sharpening the point. The mood at the table shifts from holiday ease to something tighter, and Ezzie watches it happen without intervening. She wanted this, and now that it is happening she cannot look away from it.

Carmen lands on a Geography question about Pan Am's first international destination. She wants to answer, but she doesn't know what Pan Am is, and the gap is exposed publicly. The question hangs there, and Carmen's blankness becomes the center of the table's attention. Everyone waits. Carmen looks at the card, then at the faces around the table, and the silence stretches.

Mark laughs at Carmen's confusion, wanting to treat it lightly, but then realizes she is serious. The laugh dies. He explains Pan Am to her, and the explanation only deepens her embarrassment, turning a small gap in knowledge into a spotlight. His laugh was meant to smooth things over, and instead it made the moment larger, and he sees it happen and cannot stop it.

Lee adds that Pan Am was gone by his childhood, wanting to twist the knife. The remark lands harder than he may have intended, because it makes Carmen realize her boyfriend is significantly older than her own father. The arithmetic of it settles over the table, and no one can pretend not to have done it. The numbers sit there, plain and unspoken, and Carmen's face changes as she works them out.

Carmen slaps on a smile and passes the dice to Ezzie, wanting to recover her composure. The gesture ends the confrontation but leaves the awkwardness unresolved, sitting at the table like an uninvited guest. Ezzie takes the dice with the discomfort still thick in the air.

Ezzie reflects on the evening, wanting to find something good in the holiday. She reluctantly admits the dinner had value even as she remains disturbed by her dad and Carmen together.