She nodded in solidarity and, satisfied, Mr. Brooks leaned back inside and closed the window.

Jess popped the cap off her beer and took a seat at the table. “To be fair,” Pops said, arranging the cards in his hands, “it is a pretty great broom.”

“I am no broom connoisseur so I shall take your word for it.” Jess wrapped her arms around Nana and rested her head on her grandmother’s shoulder, closing her eyes. “Have I told you how much I love you?”

Nana Jo patted her arm. “Not in the last thirty minutes.”

Jess kissed her cheek. “Okay then. I love you a whole lot.”

“How was dinner?”

Jess laughed dryly. First of all, she’d left before she finished eating. A crime. Second… where to begin? “It was enlightening.”

“Oh?” Nana prompted, interest piqued. Nana loved a bit of drama.

Sitting up, Jess drew a line through the condensation on her beer bottle. Nana and Pops resumed their game. “Do you know how much it takes to raise a kid these days?” she finally asked.

“A damn sight more than when we were doing it, I’m sure,” Pops said, then played an ace for thirty-one and pegged forward two.

“Estimated to be at least $233,610. That’s housing,” Jess began, counting off on her fingers, “food, transportation, clothing, health care, child care, and miscellaneous. And that’s only to the age of seventeen.”

Pops whistled and reached for his own beer.

“Tuition to a school like UCSD is fifty-two thousand for a four-year degree,” Jess said. “And that’s an in-state public school. Juno could want to go out of state, and it would quadruple the price. I can barely afford ballet lessons.” She took a long drag of her beer and then stood up to get another.

Pops looked at her over his glasses; the fairy lights suspended overhead reflected in the thick lenses. A candle flickered on the table; crickets chirped in a planter nearby. “I think you’d better tell us about this dinner.”

Jess returned to her seat. “You remember the dating service Fizzy joined?”

Nana laid down a card, and then moved her peg forward two. “The one where you spit in the tube?”

“Yep.” Jess turned to Pops. “And you remember the guy outside? The night you picked me up?”

“Tall, good-looking?” He paused, his smile smug. “So your mood that night was about him.”

“No, but this mood is.” She laughed. “That dating service isn’t really a dating service. Or… it is, but they don’t just find you dates. You provide a sample, they create a genetic profile, and then they give you a list of matches based on the criteria you select. Fizzy got five bazillion matches because she set the parameters really wide.”

Pops nodded. “Sounds like Fizzy.”

“And you did this?” Nana asked.

Jess hesitated. “Fizzy bought me a kit for my birthday, and I had a moment of temporary insanity. The night Pops picked me up, the higher-ups had just told me about the person I’d been matched with. Tonight, at dinner, they had a proposition for me.”