She jerked her shoulders. “Yeah, she’s this Cannon Award-winning astronomer, who has spent her entire life studying neutron stars. She went out to the desert so she could watch some sort of meteor shower and she met my dad, a hippie who renamed himself Journey. They spent three days having sex under the open sky and nine months later my mother named me for the morning star.”

“Well, considering your dad’s name is Journey, it could have been worse.”

“Oh, he wasn’t around for my birth. He wasn’t around for the first two years, really. My parents never married, thank God. That would have been the real nightmare. But my mom handed me over when I was almost three. I sort of bounced as a toddler, between dad and my grandparents. Dad spent a lot of time traveling, and found it very convenient to leave me in Wisconsin with them.”

“You never stayed with your mom?” Zed asked.

“Well, astronomy labs aren’t exactly child-friendly. The expensive equipment, the extremely sensitive telescopes. And she moved around a lot, depending on who was funding her research. My grandparents wanted me to have some stability. And she really preferred quiet, stress-free home environments, so she could focus. That Nobel prize isn’t going to win itself, you know.”

“Do you still talk to her?”

She nodded. “Oh, sure, once or twice a year on the phone. She’s not a bad person, just very self-centered. She wasn’t and never will be ready to be a parent. I was lucky that she chose to leave me with people who were prepared to raise me.

Zed wrapped an arm around her. “And your dad?”

“I traveled around with him a bit when I was a teenager, during the summers. I saw a lot more of the world than most kids at my high school. But eventually, my grandparents stopped agreeing to his trips. You can only tolerate your granddaughter being questioned by customs authorities in Amsterdam so many times before you have to draw a line. Dad’s a bit of a hot mess,” she admitted. “I haven’t seen Journey much since, which is fine, because he’s not someone I enjoy spending time with. You would think I would have weird abandonment issues, considering that both my parents left me behind. But I’m pretty well adjusted, except for this little thing where I run from emotional intimacy like my hair is on fire.”

“Oh, really? I hadn’t noticed.”

Dani slung a wet wash cloth at him. Zed caught the wet terrycloth before it smacked him in the face, twining his fingers through hers.

“So you grew up in Wisconsin?”

Dani grinned. “On an apple farm, of all things. It’s really beautiful there.”

“Never took you for a farm girl.”