“Yeah,” Maggie said. “I know.” For a second, Greta thought she was going to say something serious, but she just concluded, “I’ve got a million Amtrak points.”

“Good,” Greta said. “Listen, I gotta go. I’m seeing alligators.”

“Like…up close?”

“Very fucking close. Love you, bye.”

“Send pictures!” Maggie was saying as Greta hung up.

She rejoined Ramona and Carys.

“Which of the brood was that?” Ramona asked.

“Maggie.”

“Aw, Maggie’s my favorite one. She’s had, like, less time to be in your family so she’s slightly more functional.”

“Okay, enough about my family. Can we just take some pictures of terrifying dino monsters now?”

“Yes. Yes, we can,” Ramona said.

Carys took Greta’s hand again and brought it to her lips, a silent question: Are you okay? Greta squeezed her hand in reassurance. When Carys slid a hand to her nape and rubbed gently, Greta hmmed and pressed closer.

“You’re such a cat,” Carys said fondly.

Greta blinked at her, then licked her lips and pressed her forehead to Carys’.

“Meow,” she said and caught Carys’ mouth in a kiss.

***

Greta was walking Horse at dusk, the skies over the Marigny dimming to a sherbet swirl of peach and purple, when she called Maggie back.

Maggie was the sister she felt she knew both most and least. Most because she’d observed Maggie’s entire life from a vantage point of three years’ wisdom. Least because she’d left for college when Maggie was fifteen and Maggie had been gone at college by the time she moved back to Owl Island.

But she couldn’t stop thinking about Ramona’s offhand comment. Ramona’d only met Maggie a handful of times. Once when she’d accompanied Greta home for Passover on Owl Island, twice when Maggie had come to visit for the weekend, and once when the whole family had come to Greta’s graduation.

Still, blunt though she could be, Ramona did have an uncanny sense of people even after meeting them for the first time. She’d been the friend in college who had disliked Chad “Morty” Mortimer, whom everyone had loved for his easygoing, somewhat awkward charm and his ability to spend his family’s money in ways that benefited whatever friend group he was with at the time. Morty, who ended up getting kicked out of school their junior year when a woman took to social media to expose him as a rapist after seven allegations of sexual assault were deemed not worth “ruining his life over” by the administration.

“Oh good, the crocodiles didn’t get you,” Maggie answered the phone.

“Alligators,” Greta corrected absently. “Okay, is our family totally fucked?”

“Yes,” Maggie said without missing a beat. “But I love us so much.”