Stevie brushed her hair back from her face and shrugged. “I don’t know much more than that either.”

I let my eyes drift over the platform and gave Brad’s head a scratch. “Why do you think they’re acting like this now? Mateo and Mallory, I mean.” Stevie never talked much about her stepsiblings, but I’d now met one and was about to meet another, and I was having trouble squaring their behavior—Mallory’s cheek-kissing and effusiveness and Mateo’s immediate offer to help—with the people who seemed to want nothing to do with her.

“Like what?”

“Like suddenly they’re being nice after acting so unfriendly to you.” Stevie looked fixedly at the train tracks, and I shook my head. “Not unfriendly,” I corrected. “I mean, I know they were never outright rude or anything. Just… unwelcoming, right? But now he’s willing to help?”

“I don’t know,” Stevie said, still looking at the train tracks littered with trash. I was about to ask a follow-up, but something in her tone stopped me. It was the same tone I heard whenever the subject of the divorce or her dad came up. Like there was suddenly caution tape around a subject, a blinking neon NO TRESPASSING sign. And I didn’t feel like it was just there to keep me out—it was like Stevie didn’t even want to go there herself.

“Well, we’re getting to know a lot more about Mallory tonight,” I said, trying to lighten the mood. “She has a dog named Brad and a super with a cute nephew.”

“I knew you were flirting with him!” Stevie said, finally looking at me and doing a tiny victorious hop. “I can always tell. But don’t you mean he’s supercute?”

I groaned. Stevie laughed. “Do you think he’s cute, though?”

Stevie shrugged one shoulder. “He’s too short for me.”

“You’re short!”

She gasped theatrically, and I laughed. “How dare you. I am not short,” she said, drawing herself up to her full height—which, in her heels, was admittedly almost the same height as me. “I’m shorter than you, but that doesn’t mean I’m short.”

“You do have a thing for tall guys, though,” I pointed out. “Beckett was, like, six feet.”

“Six-two.”

“I rest my case.”

“Seriously, Cary’s all yours,” Stevie said, arching an eyebrow at me.

“I don’t want him to be all mine. I don’t even know the guy! I was just saying that I appreciated his… aesthetic qualities. And I wanted to flirt with him before my hair totally fell.”

“It still looks good,” Stevie assured me as she pulled out her phone.

“You’ve got pretty good reception down here,” I said as I reached for Ophelia.

“Wait—” Stevie said, trying to pull her phone back from me.

“What?”