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If you don't let people talk about things in confidence then they won't talk about them

"I think that will be okay as long as I'm up front about what I can and can't keep confidential. Which I expect will result in her being careful not to tell me anything she wouldn't say to you such that it won't even come up. Again, not that I would expect it to come up regardless."

...Nod. 

"It's one of the things that can be so tricky about fostering. There are lots of things where I could use my judgement, if it were my child, but - Teagan won't legally be my child. There are laws at the state level, like mandated reporting, and there are also policies my fostering agency has that I had to agree to. I don't expect it to come up with you, because you're very thoughtful and careful, but - it does come up more, for teenagers who want to be adults and aren't yet. I don't always agree with the policies, either, but - it is what it is." 

"Wait, will I have legal obligations towards Teagan? Beyond the usual ones of citizens not to bother each other? Are you not allowed to take her if you can't expect me to report some set of things?" Surely that can't be what Evelyn means and she's missing some other subtext entirely.

"No, no, you don't! You didn't sign a contract with the Sierra fostering agency and the State of Nevada Social Services."

And also cannot legally sign contracts but Evelyn isn't going to rub that in. Evelyn is honestly not sure this conversation is a good idea to be having, but she thinks most of her massive feeling of discomfort is because it feels like way too much to put on "a six-year-old" as opposed to way too much to put on Miranda. 

"But I did, and it applies for you and Teagan, which means that on top of keeping Tegan safe - as much as I can, I can't lock her in the house and I wouldn't anyway - I need to be taking precautions to make sure that having Teagan here isn't going to harm you or make you feel uncomfortable about living here. If I were worried that you would find it hard to stand up for yourself if you felt uncomfortable or scared - some kids are a lot more vulnerable to peer pressure than I think you are - then, yeah, I might consider whether taking Teagan was the right thing to do."

Shrug. "I hope you're right that it won't come up, and we'll have had this whole silly conversation unnecessarily, but I don't know Teagan yet. Sometimes kids who grew up in - difficult circumstances - don't really understand that some things aren't appropriate for younger children." 

"I really don't think you need to worry about it, yeah. I'm not worried about her making me uncomfortable, I just want to avoid any moral dilemmas that I can trivially avoid now and would have a harder time with if I wasn't prepared. It sounds like we have a reasonable solution of 'I promise to tell you anything that I think Teagan would be seriously harmed if I didn't tell you, I make sure she knows I promised that'?"

"...That seems fine, yeah."

Evelyn is not 100% sure that Miranda is on the same page as her about what she's agreeing to, and is impaired in checking this by the fact that, while she dozens if not hundreds of examples she could use to clarify, almost none of them are appropriate to discuss with a six-year-old, especially when it's probably not even relevant because Teagan will know perfectly well not to talk to a six-year-old about her sex life. She's also not sure that Miranda is right to be unworried about Teagan making her uncomfortable, and suspects Miranda has no idea what kind of thing Evelyn has in mind, but - well, the same thing applies, the last thing she wants to do is make Miranda uncomfortable right here and now to prove a point. 

"...And, just to remind you, we don't have to decide for-sure for sure until after we meet her tomorrow." 

Teagan could totally make her feel uncomfortable, but more in an annoyed way or an empathy-concern way than in a traumatized way, and fourteen is young enough that Miranda feels a certain instinctive protectiveness. Being more worried about being harmed by Teagan than about accidentally wronging her, when Miranda knows full well that Teagan is the more vulnerable party here in anything other than a physical fight, would be--undignified. Obviously Evelyn has no way of knowing any of this because Miranda isn't telling.

"None of the concerns I raised are major enough that I might want her to not live with us over them." She's going to be cordial and welcoming and conclude that Teagan will make a totally sustainable housemate if it's at all within her power to do so.

Jeremy replies to a text confirming that it's fine. (Evelyn will have a private conversation with him later about What To Do If Teagan Offers Him A Blowjob.) Evelyn calls the social worker back and is rewarded with a level of gushing gratitude that, as usual, makes her kind of uncomfortable. 

A midmorning park meetup is put on the calendar for the next day. Evelyn drives them over at the scheduled time. 

The Abbotts are already there, and wave brightly at Evelyn. The two younger boys playing on the swings. 

Teagan is pretty unmistakeable. She's a petite girl with bleached blonde hair in deliberately messy and off-center pigtails, her banks scraped back from her forehead with bobby pins. She's wearing a lot of black eyeliner (though well-applied and not smudged), black lipstick, cutoff jeans over ripped black tights with chunky boots, and a long-sleeved shirt with horizontal slits deliberately cut all the way down the sleeves, edges fraying, and a print of a skull with roses growing out of the eye sockets. She also has a pierced eyebrow and one of those plastic stretchy chokers around her neck. 

She's sitting two park benches down from her current foster parents and the social worker, typing on her phone - a surprisingly new-looking iPhone - and clearly deliberately ignoring the adults. Though she isn't quite successfully hiding her sneaky sideways glances at Evelyn and her accompanying party. 

She looks like, well, a teenager who's doing the stereotypical teenage rebellion thing. Miranda's hardly going to judge; for all she knows she had a very similar phase at some point. (Huh. Part of not having any memories is that she can't remember any of the most embarrassing and awkward moments of her original life. That's kind of neat.) She waves the next time Teagan looks over and tries to gauge how open she is to less-adult interaction.

Teagan doesn't wave back, just raises an eyebrow and then quickly returns her eyes to her phone, but she doesn't look annoyed either. She won't object or glare at her if Miranda wants to join her on the bench. (She won't immediately speak to her or look up from her phone, either, though she's clearly sneaking sideways glances.) 

They can sit in peaceful silence and sneak glances at each other while Miranda plays music in her head again and contemplates whether to proactively bring up her promise to Evelyn sometime tomorrow or leave it until it becomes relevant. And listens to Evelyn talking to the other foster parents, if she does it audibly.

(Evelyn and the foster parents are trying to be discreet and are not incredibly audible from two benches away.) 

Teagan eventually clears her throat, though still without looking up. "So you're the other foster kid?" 

"Yeah. Miranda. You're Teagan, right?"

"Mm. I guess." Teagan tosses her head, making her pigtails bounce. "- What's the house like?" 

"It's nice. Good collection of books, clean but not the obsessive kind of clean where you feel weird existing in it. And Evelyn's pretty cool."

Teagan makes a dubious hmmfff sort of noise. ...Looks like someone who might be considering whether to say something else and is running into a pre-existing stubbornness not to say anything on particular topics. 

Relatable, honestly. Unfortunately that doesn't give Miranda any idea how to react to it, so she just swings her legs where they don't reach the ground.

Teagan kicks at the grass with her boots. 

"- They're all ""cool"" if it's a cute little kid like you," she mutters after a minute or so of silence. "- M'not mad at you. Just. No one wants teenagers, we're too much trouble." 

"Yeah, the system is bogus." And Miranda in particular is cheating in a physically implausible number of ways. "Evelyn tries to keep the bogosity to the legally required minimum, at least."

Teagan - blinks, like that wasn't what she was expecting to hear, but then rolls her eyes. "Riiiiight. So she's the 'subtle manipulation makes the medicine go down' school of parenting, not the," finger-quotes and a high-pitched voice, "'going out is a privilege, young lady, and you haven't earned it.'" 

"I'm hardly an expert at detecting subtle manipulation so I can't be sure, but I haven't noticed any from her." Committed some on her, yes; detected any incoming, no. "What-all are you worried she'll manipulate you into doing?"

Shrug. "Being all convenient for her and not making a fuss about the child prison system, I guess." 

"Hmmmm. So, the way I see it--not the best way or the only way to see it, just what I'm doing--is, I'm not going to get her to back down on any of the stuff she's legally required to do, because the government has a bigger stick than me." And because Evelyn is a very law-abiding person in general, which is a convenient trait in authority figures as often as not. "So I ignore all that stuff and focus on getting what I want on all the other axes. Gets me most of the available gains with the minimum of effort."

“- Sorry, what?” Teagan is giving her a spectacularly nonplussed look. “Say that again like a normal person and not some sort of weirdo law professor?”