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As we make our way, I ask about what she’s been doing the last couple of days while I’ve been on the road. “A lot of nothing,” she says, which really means driving Noah to his baseball practices and games, taking her mother to another medical appointment to change her pain medication, and coming to my condo every day to take care of Harold, water the plants that are growing like mad, and finish whatever dumbass chore I give her, which have become things like adding Love Is Blind to my Netflix watchlist and buying and testing out a garlic peeler, so now I have a mason jar full of garlic sitting in my refrigerator that I don’t know what to do with.

“I’m surprised you want to walk,” Millie notes as we cross Market Street. Only three more blocks until we’re there.

“Why?”

“Because you hate living here.” When I shrug, she asks, “Does that mean you don’t hate it?”

I make a noncommittal sound.

“You don’t hate it.” She elbows my side. “Are you starting to like it here? Maybe even love it?”

“No.” And then I add, “A little.”

She gasps in delight, skipping next to me. “Look at you, the grumpy pitcher, turning his team around, loving the City of Brotherly Love.”

“I wouldn’t go that far.”

“How far would you go?”

“I like…the view of the river from my place. I like my teammates and coaches. I like, goddamnit, I like Yadi.”

She cackles at that one, head back, laughter ringing around us, even over the traffic zooming past on JFK Boulevard.

“I like your laugh,” I say quietly, and she immediately loses her smile.

“I thought you said this isn’t a date.”

“It’s not. You’re not wearing a bra.”

“I like that you never make me feel weird. I like that you laugh at me without laughing at me. I like that you like my kid and my mom. I like that⁠—”

I grab her hand, forcing us both to freeze at the end of the block. “Millie, stop. You have to stop.”

“Why?”

“Because if you don’t stop being honest with me, I don’t think I’ll be able to pretend this isn’t a date anymore.”

Her throat bobs on a swallow, and I nod toward the museum. “Besides. We’re here.”

She follows my line of sight and brightens. “The science academy?”

“I was able to rent it out for two hours.”

Her jaw drops. “We get the whole place to ourselves?”

“Until eleven thirty.”

She takes off, dragging me behind her. “Come on! We only have two hours!”

Inside, we’re greeted by the director of the museum and one of the docents, who offers us her services to escort us around the exhibits, but I glance to Millie, who’s paying us no mind, practically dancing in place. “Thank you, but I think I’ve got my own guide here.”

“Well, I cannot thank you enough for your generous donation to our education program. If there is anything I can do for you while you’re here, just let me know,” the director says, and I nod in appreciation, linking my fingers with Millie’s because she’s like a horse at the starting gate, ready to take off.

According to my browsing over the website, this is the oldest natural science museum in the United States and currently partners with one of the city’s universities for research and programming. I recalled Millie saying she used to like to come here as a kid because of the dinosaur fossils, and it’s the first place she goes to, pointing out each one. Even though she knows so much already, she takes the time to read each plaque, sometimes interjecting her own knowledge, like how the Avaceratops’ bones were first discovered in Montana in 1981, and it’s named for the wife of the man who originally found them.

“What else do you know?” I ask, and she unabashedly answers, “Lots” before linking her fingers with mine to take me around the museum, my own personal tour guide.

We walk through all three floors, taking in each and every diorama, displays representing almost every continent and ecosystem. She teaches me that there used to be tens of millions of bison in this country, but now they number about five hundred thousand, which is up from the one thousand that were left at the turn of the twentieth century. Millions of wild yaks live in Asia, but particularly in Tibet, and they’re protected, which is why their numbers flourish. The last known passenger pigeon died in 1914 and went extinct because of the massive deforestation that happened during the Industrial Revolution.