She didn’t look familiar to me at all, but Stevie was giving her a wan smile and a half wave. “Hi, Mallory,” she said. I stared at her, realizing that this must be Stevie’s stepsister. I had never met any of Stevie’s siblings, and the only pictures I’d seen had been from the wedding, in which Stevie’s smile was bright and fake, and hurt me a little to look at. Mallory was the oldest, and in publicity; Margaux was the middle child, and though apparently she did something in fashion, her job mostly seemed to be traveling the world and taking gauzy selfies; and Mateo was the youngest, in college, just a year older than us. And even though I knew these three people existed, it was still strange to be confronted with this whole other part of Stevie’s life that I knew very little about, and wasn’t a part of.

“I thought it was you!” Mallory said, giving Stevie a kiss on each cheek, like we were in France. “What are you doing here?”

“Well, we—that’s my friend Kat,” Stevie said, gesturing to me, and I waved, hoping I wouldn’t get kissed. “We just got off the—”

“This is such a coincidence!” Mallory interrupted. “But like the good kind! What’s that called? Kismet?” She looked from me to Stevie, but just when I took a breath to answer, she was speaking again. “How are you? How’s your boyfriend?”

“Oh,” Stevie said, looking uncomfortable. From everything Stevie had said—or not said, but let me infer—her stepsiblings had never wanted anything to do with her, so I wondered why Mallory was doing this, double-kissing her cheeks and being fake-chummy, even if she was getting massive details wrong. “We—um—broke up.…”

“That’s great,” Mallory said, clearly not listening at all. “Listen, I’m so happy to run into you, because I’m dealing with this thing and I do not have time to handle it because I have to get this train—I’m going upstate, to Bear Mountain. Have you been? There’s like a lodge, and a spa, and I need it, let me tell you.” She started to run her hand through her hair, but it got stuck on her sunglasses. She plucked them from her head like she was surprised to see them there, then dropped them into her purse.

“What’s the thing?” I asked, curious, but regretted it a second later when Stevie shot me a look.