The lower couch serves as the bottom bunk. The upper bunk is a plank released from above the couch with a thin plastic mattress. The train provides cotton sheets and comforters. “I’m the top bunk?” Thomas asks.

“Unless you want to sleep with my dog.” The look of concern on his face makes me laugh. Moose growls when Thomas stands on the bottom of my bed to make his own, then hoists his lanky frame up. Good dog.

He bangs his head on the ceiling. “Shit.”

I hand Chris up to him before she can make a leap that might end badly, then slide into bed. Moose settles at my feet, curling into an impossibly small ball. His breath slows then turns into snores. “Just so you know, that’s not me.”

“If I have to get up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, will Moose bite my leg?”

“Not sure.”

The sky through the compartment’s window is a midnight blue blanket dotted with stars. We must be in Northern California by now, beyond light pollution. “On summer nights, when I was a kid, I’d lie in the hammock on the back deck, wonder if my real parents ever looked down from heaven. If I saw a shooting star, I thought it was a message that they were watching over me.”

A star falls, its silver tail scraping along the sky’s dark blue fabric. I close my eyes and the shimmer remains on my lids for a few seconds then fades away. The train rocks, Moose snores, there’s an occasional squeak of wheels on rails. Thomas is quiet for so long that I start to think he’s asleep.

“Have your abilities been the same since childhood?” Thomas finally asks.

My nerves flicker a yellow alert. “Like I say in my origin story, I didn’t know about my abilities until San Francisco.”

“How is that possible?”

I don’t know. “Every psychic has an origin story when their gift appears.”

“So as a kid you never knew if the telephone was going to ring? When someone was sick or died? Where to find misplaced car keys or a lost dog?”

A memory creeps forward. Icy water stipples gooseflesh. A shiver wrings my spine. “I didn’t grow up in the kind of house where magical thinking was encouraged. Early to bed, early to rise, get your chores done, team sports, church once, sometimes twice a week, and only mom-approved TV shows and movies.”

“Hard to believe,” Thomas presses.

His relentless questions make me feel like roadkill getting picked apart by vultures. I roll onto my side, curl up, arms around my legs. “I get it. You don’t believe anything I say.”

“You lied about Katy.”

“So did you.” Thomas is silent. “I didn’t get anything from the wedding ring you gave me. Like it’d never been worn. So I built a bridge, hoping to get to the other side . . . to help you.”

“I borrowed the engagement ring from a jeweler.”