Where is her mother?The question circled around my head.What happened to Sarah's mother?
"Uncle C." Sarah's voice was patient. "It's okay. I'll do the cutting. You do the gluing."
"I can handle scissors, Sarah."
"The glue is important too."
He sighed, as if he was accepting defeat, and took the glue stick she handed him.
I watched them for another moment. The mountain man and the small, serious girl.
He was trying. That much was painfully clear. Trying and failing and trying again, the way people do when love is bigger than their skill set.
Something in my chest ached.
I turned away, back to the swirl of mothers and children and glitter, but the ache stayed with me, stubborn and strange. It felt familiar. Like looking into a mirror and seeing a reflection I hadn't expected.
We all had our own versions of paper flowers, I supposed. Tasks we weren't built for. Roles we stumbled through because someone needed us to try.
The sunlight caught the glitter on my hands, scattering tiny rainbows across my skin. Behind me, I heard Sarah laugh at something her uncle said. It was a bright, surprised sound that made several mothers turn and smile.
And Cole Brennan, mountain man and reluctant crafter, sat in a chair that was three sizes too small for him, glue stick clutched in his massive fist, looking at his niece like she was the only thing in the world that mattered.
Who are you?I thought.And what's your story?
These questions revolved around, making me ever more curious about this man so out of his own depth.
I had a feeling I was going to find out.
2.Cole
I've faced a grizzly sow protecting her cubs. I've been caught in a whiteout blizzard on the north ridge with nothing but a compass and sheer stubbornness to get me home. I've extracted honey from a hive of furious bees after a bear raid, having to carefully move hive frames while a thousand tiny assassins debated whether to end me.
None of it, not for one single moment, prepared me for the terror of a Pine Ridge Elementary second-grade classroom on Mother's Day.
The air was a thick soup of sugary perfume and the cloying smell of glue. Paper hearts dangled from the ceiling like cheerful little threats. Every surface glittered. Glitter, I'd learned from Sarah's craft projects at home, was a biological hazard. It never left. It multiplied. Scientists would find it in the ice cores a thousand years from now and wonder what catastrophe had befallen humanity. The answer would be: second-grade craft projects.
Sarah's small hand was warm in mine, a grounding point. She was vibrating with excitement, practically bouncing in her pretty blue dress. Before I could stop her, she ran into the classroom, leaving me with a ‘Don’t move’.
"This is my Uncle Cole!" Her voice rang out across the hallway, bright with pride. "He's the best!"
The best. I wouldn't call myself that. Adequate, maybe, on a good day.
A stand-in.
A rough-cut guardian who knew more about treating a sprained ankle than braiding hair, more about reading weather patterns than understanding the social politics of six-year-old girls. But her faith in me, that unwavering kid-logic that said I hung the moon simply because I was the one who showed up, it always lit me up and made me smile.
I looked at her teacher. My ability to speak instantly vanished.
I'd expected someone older. Sterner. A woman shaped like a schoolmarm from an old movie, with a ruler and a permanent frown and sensible shoes. Emma Reed was decidedly not that.
She was young, late twenties maybe, with dirty-blonde hair escaping a messy knot that somehow looked intentional. Her smile was warm and genuine, the kind that reached her eyes and transformed her whole face. But it was the eyes themselves that caught me and held on. Warm hazel, bright with welcome, and beneath that brightness, a shadow. A flicker of something heavy and familiar. I knew that look intimately. I saw it in my own mirror some mornings, staring back at me like an accusation.
"It's wonderful to meet you." Her voice was warm, steady, like honey left in the sun. "I'm Emma Reed. Sarah’s teacher."
"Ma'am," I managed. One word.
Smooth, Cole. Real smooth.
