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Signy picked at a bit of lint on her pant leg. The problem with this exchange happening in the hallway was there wasn’t another hallway to exit through. She didn’t begrudge Cora her anger, and truth be told, a cuff or two upside the head might be just what Twig needed. But as for having front-row seats for this—Signy didn’t feel that was her place. Cora was Twig’s family. Signy wasn’t.

Twig looked up at Cora, ire overtaking shame. It was truly amazing how two people who didn’t share the same parents and didn’t look a thing alike could make exactly the same facial expressions. “You didn’t have to come,” Twig said.

“Okay? Well? I did.” Cora gestured broadly at herself, giving her upper chest a quick slap with both palms. “I’m here. Where have you been?”

Twig scrunched her mouth. She didn’t say anything.

“I have a guess,” Cora goaded. “Would you like me to guess? Because I am pretty sure the reason I just coughed up three hundred bucks”—Twig cringed—“was because you were caught tagging along with some idiots who’d stolen a bunch of fuel. They didn’t tell me for what, but so help me god, if you’re still on this Sucker’s Luck kick—”

“I was just—” Twig sighed toward the ceiling. “I wasn’t gonna go with them out there, I was just hanging out—”

“That is not how I heard it,” Cora said.

“Look. They needed a place to stash it, right, and the place I’m crashing at has all this storage space—”

Cora shushed her violently, speaking in a hiss. “‘Free to go’ does not mean ‘spill your guts in earshot.’ Jesus christ, what is wrong with you?”

Signy stood and walked toward them. “Maybe,” she offered, glancing pointedly at the gawking strangers all around, “there’s a more private room you could have this conversation in.”

The barbed look Twig flashed her said this had been the wrong step. “Nobody asked you.”

“Hey.” Cora stabbed a finger in Twig’s direction. “Don’t be a bitch, she hasn’t done anything.”

“You’re the bitch, and this isn’t her business.”

“She’s trying to give you an out here, dipshit—”

“Stop calling me—”

Signy cleared her throat, once. She turned her attention to Cora. “I’m going to the ferry station,” she said. “If I’m not still there when you get there, I’ll be at my place.” She kissed Cora on the cheek, and gave Twig a neutral nod. “I hope you have a better night.”

She walked alone toward the changing room, letting the tension fall off her like ash. She shouldn’t have come. A police station was not a place she wanted her face known in, empty pockets or no, and she was never entirely sure how to be, around Cora and Twig. Signy had never had any siblings, by blood or by choice. She didn’t really understand that sort of bond. She understood there was a bond, and that it wasn’t something you could easily break, not even on a night like this. I’m going to kill her, Cora had said, racing to catch a ferry, hurrying through streets she didn’t know. I’m going to kill her, she’d said, sagging with relief at the intake counter and agreeing to pay bail without a second thought. Even now, as the sound of the two of them arguing still carried down the hall, there could be no mistake that all that anger was fueled by love. Signy had once seen a Primer movie of other primate species from Earth—peculiar cousins with thick brows and tails that behaved like arms. The movie had showed a pair screaming at each other, chasing and posturing with fangs bared to the upper gums. I’m going to kill her, the entire scene said. Then minutes later, they cuddled together in the crook of a tree, picking through fur and eating each other’s fleas in inseparable atonement.

Signy wondered what it felt like, to have that kind of family. She wondered if it was better or worse that she’d never know.

The ferry arrived at the station before Cora did, and so Signy went home. Her stomach growled incessantly on the walk to her apartment, and she thought it best to pick up enough dinner for Cora, too, even if she didn’t end up coming over. Sando Press was a stone’s throw away, but no, that wouldn’t be funny now. Instead, Signy tapped her radiobuds quiet and put in a large order at the counter of the Hot Stuff Skewer Shack, knowing that if Cora came by, she’d welcome a plate of comfort food. Not skewers and flatbread specifically, but rather, anything from the category that Cora referred to as stuff in bread. Signy had learned that if you wanted to cheer Cora up, there was no going wrong with stuff in bread.

Chapter 792 Cora, Lodestone

It didn’t matter whether the day was good, the day was bad, or the day was forgettable. There was no day that could not be improved, at least a little bit, by the addition of Stuff In Bread.

Stuff In Bread—and its alter ego, Stuff In Dough—was pretty much the greatest human invention there was. Mushroom pasties? Incredible. Soy sausage in a bun? A-plus. Vegetable wontons? You know it. Anything wrapped in a tortilla? Perfection, especially if the tortilla was super fresh and a little bit burned.

Stuff In Bread, or Stuff In Dough. Always a winner, in Cora’s book.

Cora was very happy with the Stuff In Dough she was in the middle of consuming—strawberry rhubarb pie, at last. Great stuff, great dough. There was a nice big dollop of vanilla cashew cream on top, its silky smoothness mingling oh-so-satisfyingly with that perfect springtime mix of tart and sweet. Cora still didn’t have a deep sense for what seasons actually were, but life in the Ring had taught her to live by a rhythm of foods. Strawberry and rhubarb in the spring. Peach and blueberry in the summer. Apple and pear came down in the aptly named fall, and whatever you’d dried or made into jam was what got you through winter. She didn’t know what the weather associated with these foods was like (weather, man; now there was something she never had to think about anymore). But even though they technically could farm crops in the Ring the same way they had on Fortune, where everything grew all at the same time, Cora preferred to feel the year through what she ate. It wouldn’t have been as special, to have strawberry and rhubarb all the time.

Besides, the whole idea of a year was bullshit to begin with. There’d be twenty-six more of those before Solace completed its current lap around the sun. But, still. It was useful to have a standard to measure both crops and humans by. Years were one of the old things nobody had been able to shake yet.

Those, and . . . well, a lot of other stuff.

She took another bite of pie and chewed, watching a group of kids playing some sort of kick-the-ball deal from her vantage point of a bench outside the bakery. Kick-the-ball was about as universal as Stuff In Bread, Cora reckoned. Kids were always kicking balls—here on Lodestone, back on Fortune, in the Primer. Was it actually a universal kid thing, though? Or was it just that their window to Earth was so small? No knowing. There was no way to widen that view, no matter how bad a person might want to.

“I think,” she said quietly, after swallowing her mouthful. “I think maybe I . . . will check that group out.” She cleared her throat. “The support group, I mean.”

Signy looked at her, likewise holding both pie and fork. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Cora said. “I mean, I do think I’m okay, the vast majority of days, but . . .”