Best of all? There’re two signs that seemed to greet us when we came in, both on the same wall of the building that forms one edge of the park. They’re old, faded, and partially obscured by the trees, both advertising the same local pharmacy that’s no longer in business. One has white letters on a black background; the other, black letters on white. Sans serif fonts, sturdy and practical, more lovely for the wear and tear, and every time I ask Reid a question, he looks up at them.

“Do you all look the same?” I ask now, my eyes wide. Seven Sutherland siblings, he’d told me. Six boys and one girl. After this I’m going to ask if they ever performed a concert in Austria, or had a series of romance novels written about them.

It is ridiculous how much better I feel.

Reid looks at the sign, his brow furrowed. “Some of us do, I suppose. Connor and Garrett and I, we all have this hair color, same as my dad.”

Do they all have your jawline?! I want to ask.

“But Owen and Ryan and Seth and Cady all have my mom’s dark hair.”

“How do you remember all their names?” I’m only half-joking. A family that big—I can’t really imagine.

He smiles over at me. “You don’t forget your siblings’ names. No matter how many of them there are.”

“Yeah, of course.” I add an awkward laugh, but then I lower my eyes and press my hands into my thighs, rubbing at the aching that’s mostly dissipated now. When we got here, Reid insisted that I stretch my legs out in front of me along the bench’s slats, and then—a stroke of magic—he’d produced a small blister pack of (not stale) ibuprofen from his jacket pocket. My first of the twenty questions had thus almost been Will you marry me? but instead I’d settled for asking whether he always has pocket-sized pain relief.

“The occasional tension headache,” he’d said as he settled his tall, lean form right up against the bench’s other side, leaving me most of the space. Something had closed off in his face when he’d answered, an echo of that T-E-N-S-E, so I’d stayed on the sibling stuff he’d introduced with the mention of his sister.

“Do you have any brothers or sisters?” Reid asks, and I guess it’s only fair, but I really preferred when this game of twenty questions was focused on him.

“Uh, no.” It comes out more sharply than I intend. But not having siblings—it’s a sore spot in my family history, nearly as sore as my dad having a decade-long affair with Jennifer, and my mom knowing about it the whole time.

“I always wondered what it’d be like, though,” I add, trying to soften the edge.

“Crowded,” he says flatly. Then he looks over at me, his mouth curving upward, and I think it’s his own way of softening that edge.