I smile and wave at a couple of kids playing in their front garden—Nora and Nathan, both of whom came through my class a couple of years ago. I guess, for them, this just seems like a fantastic opportunity to take a few days off school. I suppose it hasn’t really struck them yet how much their lives are going to change in the coming months.
I wonder if they’ll all be placed in the same school together, or if they’ll be split up, all those little friend groups divided as they settle them into various classrooms miles away from each other. I know it’s silly to get sad over little things like that, but it’s hard not to let it bother me. I’ve seen these kids grow up, form friendships, fall out and make up again. The thought of them losing all of that feels wrong.
“You see this?” I explain to my kids, as we stop at the edge of the town square where a few trees have been scorched from the fire that reached over from the town hall. “This leaf, it’s black because of a fire that came through here. That’s why you had to go to the motel to stay with your grandparents for a while…”
“Can I see?” Jake asks, a little nervously, and I reach down to scoop him into my arms, lifting him so he can touch the leaf where it still clings to the branch. It crumbles underneath his touch in an instant, giving way and falling to the ground below us. He frowns, and I smile at him, trying not to let the sadness show in my face.
“Don’t worry,” I promise him. “It just has to fall to make way for the new leaves, right?”
He rubs the ash between his fingers for a moment, inspecting it with a forensic focus like he’s trying to figure out exactly what it means. But then he nods, and I plant him back down again, praying that I’ve told him the truth—that there is a chancesomething will grow from this place again, no matter how hard it might be to believe it.
Suddenly, a voice catches my attention, and my head whips around to see where it’s coming from. To my surprise, Nathalie is rushing down from the diner, a big grin on her face, waving her arms in the air as though she’s somehow worried that I might not notice her coming right for me.
“Oh my God, there you are,” she gasps as she finally reaches us. She’s still wearing her work apron, and she wipes off her hands as she catches me by the arm. “Have you seen?” she demands, her eyes a little wild as she stares at me. The quads are all looking up at me with utter bafflement, and I’m as nonplussed as they are.
“Seen what?” I reply. “Nathalie, I have no idea what you’re talking about, I’m sorry?—”
“Come on,” she insists, and she hooks her arm through mine and drags me off down the street, around the corner—toward the school. My hearts sinks. This is the last place that I want to be right now, and my feet slouch slightly as she tries to pull me along, the quads trailing behind.
“Shouldn’t you be at work?” I ask her, and she rolls her eyes.
“Trust me, work can wait,” she replies, waving a hand. “When you see what’s going on, you’ll understand.”
I know when there’s no point in arguing with my sister, and this is one of those occasions. I do my best to keep the kids rushing alongside us, hoping that I won’t get too emotional at the sight of the school all over again. I know Nathalie doesn’t mean anything by it, but it hurts just to look at what might have?—
And then, as we turn the corner, my feet falter to a stop beneath me. Sure enough, we’re standing outside the school, or what’s left of it. But it’s not the rubble and ash that I had come down to see the other day, no—it’s alive with activity, vehicles moving this way and that, men yelling to each other as they direct the deposit of various materials on what looks to be an active building site.
“What the hell is…?”
“I know!” Nathalie exclaims, her voice practically bubbling over with excitement. “I can’t believe it either. I came past it this morning, and I thought it must have just been people moving the rubble, you know, clearing it so they can clean it properly. But then I spoke to one of the guys on the site, and he told me—he told me that they’re building a new school!”
My jaw drops, my legs growing a little wobbly underneath me. A newschool?No way. No freaking way. I thought it would beyearsbefore we so much as got the funding from the state to put together anything resembling a school again, but now, it looks like they’re working overtime to get it back up and running.
I just stand there for a moment, feeling stupid, eyes wide as I try to make sense of it, though I’m not sure I can string any of these pieces together in a way that makes sense. Who could have…?
A figure I recognize pops up from amidst the activity—Carlisle. My heart skips a beat when I lock eyes with him, and he raises a hand, gesturing for me to come over. I glance back at Nathalie, and she nods at me to go to him, already managing the kids for me so I can figure out what’s happening here.
“What on earth is going on here?” I demand as I finally reach him, too shocked to bother with a greeting or anything close to it.
He chuckles, leaning on a spade that’s dug into the earth below. “Well, that’s no way to greet the guy who’s getting your school rebuilt,” he teases me lightly, though there’s no edge of actual malice in his voice.
“You…you’re the one behind this?”
He nods. “Seemed like the least I could do,” he replies with a shrug. “Given that I had all of that money from my father and nothing to do with it?—”
“I thought you were using it to fund you and the guys, the firefighting stuff?—”
“Well, that too,” he agrees. “But sometimes it good to have a bigger project to focus on for a while, right? Something you can really pour all of your energy into.”
He draws his arm across his forehead, where sweat glistens to show the amount of work he’s been doing all morning.
“Should be up and ready to open by the end of the summer,” he explains. “Rush job, but I made sure that we got the best of the best for it. You don’t have to worry about anyone skimping on the important stuff, you have my word. That’s why I’m down here—wanted to oversee it myself.”
“Do I hear you taking all the credit?”
Another voice drifts out from the building site, and I look past Carlisle to see Dylan stepping toward us, followed by Callum and then Joe. I bite my lip, hardly able to contain my smile. All of them, here, working on this school—putting in the hard labor to get it off the ground once more and make certain that this town is served with a place of education once more. It’s a gesture bigger than any anyone has made for me in my entire life—onethat I’m not sure I can entirely wrap my head around. At least, not yet.
“You’re all here…?”
