I scoffed into my coffee and took another big sip. It had not been a particularly restful night, between my vague unease when I thought about moving to Texas and then my constant thinking about Dean while pretending I wasn’t thinking about him. “I don’t know what I’m doing yet, exactly. I’m supposed to be getting prepped for the Austin contract, but I can’t stop thinking about that abandoned lot. The folks who live there and love there. The way they’ve so eagerly taken up this task and supported Dean in the process.”

My dad didn’t even have to tease me about the fluttery way I said Dean. They could probably hear it all the way at City Hall. So I shoved eggs into my mouth and avoided looking at him.

He was paging through my notes with a curious expression. I’d spent the night looking at the emails Eric and Alexis had sent me with the specs of their school community garden. And I’d read about other neighborhoods in Philly turning their own abandoned lots into tiny parks.

I truly wanted to help Dean. But it wasn’t like I needed to get this involved. Filming was intimate work, especially when I was following some sparkling idea that didn’t come from a contract but came from pure inspiration. When I walked past the lot this morning, I spotted bits of scraggly grass and dandelions peeking through the remaining clumps of debris. The miracle of green things, forcing their way to the sun, activated every single storytelling instinct I had.

It was my other instincts, however, that urged me toward caution. The ones more concerned with self-preservation than creative muses.

“I bet if you made a video about this process, it would inspire a lot of people,” Dad said. “And even better, at least they’d have a recorded memory of it. Kinda like the way me and Kathleen have been laughing our asses off over all those old photo albums you keep finding at Lin’s place. It’s nice to remember something like this. Something good.” He shrugged. “Don’t you use your Instagram page to raise money for the community stuff you’ve worked on?”

“And what do you know about my Instagram feed?” I asked with a laugh.

That sheepish grin reappeared. “Kathleen likes to follow different cats online—”

“Makes sense.”

“Oh, and famous people who are bisexual.”

“Ah,” I said warmly. “That’s why I get a text from Kathleen every so often about bi celebrities.”

My stepmother showed her abundant unconditional love in a dozen different ways that often came in the form of cat videos and celebrity gossip.