I didn’t want this to be one-sided, and I didn’t have either side, yet. Only Rain’s statement. I wasn’t sure I’d trust anything coming through the phone or any technological medium, anyway.

I turned, and Sveta moved with me. I looked at Weld, and saw how unhappy he was.

“You okay?” I asked.

“No,” he said.

“Why are they out there and you guys in here?”

“Weld came, we talked, things—we fought. We were going to leave but we ended up fighting more. People were staring,” Sveta said. “We came back.”

And the others left, to give privacy, except for Ashley, who got impatient or didn’t want to let things continue?

“What happened?” I asked.

“Everything was fine,” Weld told me, his voice low. “As fine as it gets. Sveta was showing off how she can use a phone. Which is great. She saw pictures of me with a teammate.”

“A woman,” Sveta said.

“A teammate,” Weld said.

“Can I?” I asked. I stopped myself. “I’m not just asking if I can see. I’m asking—can I mediate? Can I help?”

“We said things,” Sveta said, every inch of her face indicating hurt. “Things we’ve been holding in for a long time, maybe. I don’t think you can help that.”

Weld averted his gaze when I looked at him.

He hadn’t waited the full six weeks.

“Can I see the pictures?” I asked.

Weld drew his phone from his pocket. He tossed it. I had to break the hug with Sveta to be sure I caught it.

The images were still up. Weld with a girl with black hair, and a skintight suit that… well, there were suits that looked like they were painted on and it looked like the woman had pointed to one of those and said ‘tighter’. Every muscle and rib stood out with the black gloss of the costume. Something hybridizing fins with blades ran along strategic points, tapering down, so cameltoe and nips weren’t quite as obvious, and served to make her look fairly dangerous.

One selfie of her and Weld, with slivers of two other capes on either side to suggest they were sitting on a bench on a plane, helicopter, or truck. Her head was tilted to rest on Weld’s shoulder, and the selfie was supposed to be focused on the fin-blade at her arm, which was absorbed by Weld. The caption was a simple ‘stuck to him’. I used ‘supposed to be’ to refer to the focus, because she had an easy, infectious smile that suggested nothing untoward.

That was just going by smile, though.

“You have to scroll. Nighttime photos,” Sveta said. Her voice was as empty as I’d felt earlier, after reading the diary.