I stretched my legs, hands resting on my happy stomach while I let my head loll back. It was easy to forget how three-dimensional the city was until you had the chance to sit and take it in. By day, the buildings looked like castle walls—now, with their windows lit gold, it felt like we were being cradled by stars.

I glanced back at Oscar. He’d finished his tart and was looking at me like he’d been waiting to say something, trying to find the right words.

“You really do . . . tackle things, don’t you?”

Heat shot up from my ankles—but it didn’t sound like an accusation. More of a compliment. “I do. When they matter. The trick is finding something that matters.”

“Like, say . . .” Oscar held up his empty paper wrapper. “Fruit tarts.”

“Exactly. So what do you think? Worth it?” At his confused expression, I added, “Worth hearing your mom’s lecture, or—?”

“She doesn’t know what she’s missing.”

“No sugar? At all?”

“Apart from national holidays? Nope.” He swirled his coffee. “Obviously, we eat what we want when she’s out of range, but . . . let’s just say we had a lot of kale growing up. Not greens. Kale.”

“Kale’s okay!”

“In extreme moderation.” He leaned back, stretching. “I don’t mean to act like she’s some tyrant. She’s a hospital administrator, so it’s more about ‘best practices.’ Like, we were all born exactly two and a half years apart, because that’s supposed to be the best gap. I . . . don’t even want to think about how they managed that.”

Like Leo and Win and Alice. Thirty-two, twenty-nine, twenty-six . . . then me, nine years later. Surprise!

“She played Mozart for all of us in the womb to make us smart, that kind of thing.” Oscar sipped his coffee. He tilted it, offering me some.

I swiped cinnamon off the foam with my pinkie. “Hasn’t that been debunked?”

He pointed at me. “That’s what they say! I don’t know, though. We all came out sharp. I was the only one who started kicking every time she put on the Jupiter Symphony. Mom said we all liked it, but I seemed to recognize it.”

The Jupiter Symphony played in my mind, grief rumbling under it like static.

I smoothed my hair back. “So who is ‘we all’? What’s your sitcom cast?”

He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out his phone. “Two sisters. One older, one younger.” Then he handed it across the table—a photo of two grinning girls piled onto a pink sofa. He leaned over to point, his face inches from mine. “Etta, Bri. They’re crazy, I love them a lot.”

I peeked up at him. I loved my family but I never talked about loving my family. It wasn’t how we worked. And here was this boy, just throwing the word out there . . . love . . . so comfortably.