“I should get going.” Sully spins on the bench, lifts his leg over to stand. He’s not that tall, but his boots are police issue. So Alex is hanging out with a cop. “Here, you can have my seat.” He waits while I sit, checking his pockets for keys and picking up a battered novel from where he’s stashed it on the seat. “Text me later, Alex.” He puts one hand on my shoulder as he moves off. “Really good to meet you, Ruth. Bye, Alex.”

Then he’s gone, taking his jean jacket and his phone, his novel and his Gravy mug with him. But something of Sully hangs in the air over Alex’s head long after the jingly bell at the door has gone quiet.

“What are you doing?” she asks again, once he’s out the door.

“What do you mean? I’m having a coffee.” I place my cup on the table. “Is that a crime?”

She doesn’t answer, just kind of shrugs. Neither of us says a word for a long minute.

Finally I say, “I remember a time when you weren’t so keen on cops.”

She doesn’t reply, just grabs her phone from a pocket and busies herself with the screen.

“He seems nice, though,” I say.

“Okay, let’s get a few things straight.” She sets the phone onto the table with enough force to squash a bug. “First off, it’s not me who’s had a lifetime of skirmishes with the law. So let’s just skip to the chase.”

“Chase?” I say. “That’s Freudian.” I don’t know why I enjoy watching her struggle like this. Maybe it’s just a leftover from childhood. She was always so easy to incense. Before, I mean. When it wasn’t so risky, so loaded.

“We need to talk about your plan. What are you here for? How long are you staying?”

“Not sure how long I’m staying.” Another measured pause.

“How far along are you? You’re barely showing.”

“Five months. Something like that. What? I’m tall. I hide it well.”

She rolls her eyes like it’s not the only thing I’m hiding, and I resent the implication.

“Chase and I had a good chat this morning over breakfast,” I say.

She shifts on the bench as if it’s heating up underneath her. “You had a chat? About what exactly?”

“This and that. One thing he did say, though, is that if I needed to stay a little longer, he was okay with it.” It’s a trick I learned a long time ago: Play one parent against the other. So rarely do they actually have time to compare notes.

There’s a moment where she scrunches her eyes and rubs them like she used to when she was losing at Monopoly. “What else did Chase decide?”