Up, up, up we went, the buildings around the edge of Manhattan rising to meet us. The farther we walked, the closer the Statue of Liberty seemed to get, almost like she was peeking around the corner, coming out to greet us. To the left of us, a Q train slogged its way over the Manhattan Bridge. Even though the city felt like hot soup, a cool breeze swept by us, and the sounds of the people milling around created a soothing cacophony of white noise. It was oddly meditative, and I wondered if Hayes felt it too. After about fifteen minutes of walking and weaving through crowds in silence, he rested a hand on my shoulder.

“Wanna sit for a sec?” he asked.

I nodded and followed him toward a bench that was, miraculously, empty. Even though I was in Converse, my feet were tired, and it felt good to sit. In front of us, a teenage girl in platform sneakers posed with her arms stretched out overhead, leaping in the air, as her mom snapped a photo. “Lemme see?” she asked, grabbing the phone out of her mom’s hand. It took a second to register, but then I realized exactly what she’d been doing: Serena’s pose, the one with the hashtag, which her followers did along with her.

At the thought of Serena, my brain immediately reached for all the usual insecure feelings I often clung to, but my heart piped in and pushed them aside. Cleo had said something to me that day we’d run into Serena in Central Park, something like “You’re all those things, and more.” It was true, and it was time I let myself believe it.

Gazing out at the harbor in front of us, I felt the oddest sense of calm wash over me. So much of the past few months had been filled with tension, and yet in this moment, I was at peace. I was reaching into my bag to snap a photo of the bridge when I noticed I had a new email. I peeked at it, just to be sure it wasn’t something work-related. When I saw who the sender was, I gasped.

“What?” Hayes shifted to look at me.

I sat there silently reading for a second. “My half sister in Italy wrote back,” I said finally, still not looking up from my phone, where I was rereading every single word.

“Oh my god.” I grabbed for his arm excitedly on instinct, like I would reach for Lola or Cleo. “She sent some photos too.”

The look on Hayes’s face was utterly patient. “Do you feel like sharing what she said?”

I passed the phone over to him so he could read it.

Dearest Franny,