Candace straightens. Her face is perfectly composed. Her knuckles whiten on the edge of the bar.
"How many?" she says. East doesn't answer fast enough. "How. Many."
"Roughly three hundred," Kyle offers from a safe distance. "Give or take. I lost count around two-thirty."
Ruby is bent double, wheezing. Darla has tears running down her face. Maggie presses both hands to her mouth. Sloane shakes against my chest, silent laughter vibrating through the dinosaur scrubs into my ribs.
Malachi looks at the bar. Looks at Candace. Looks at the bar again. "That's a lot of ducks," he says.
"That is three hundred rubber ducks in my bar," Candace says, each word measured.
"Our bar," Malachi corrects mildly.
"It's my bar and you know it."
He doesn't argue.
East finally speaks, arms folded, grin wide. "For the record, we didn't touch your liquor."
"You put a duck in the ice well."
"It was swimming. It's what ducks do."
Candace picks up one duck, examines it, and sets it back down with the kind of precision that promises future violence. "I'm keeping them."
"All of them?" Nash asks.
"Every single one. And I'm going to find a use for them that makes each of you deeply uncomfortable."
"That's fair," I say.
Frankie watches the chaos with an amused tilt to her mouth. She hasn't found her prank yet. The magnet sits on the side of her car she won't check until she parallel parks somewhere tight. Could be days. That's the beauty of it.
"You're all children," Frankie says, sipping her water.
"Says the woman who glued a vision board to my whiteboard," Malachi says.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"With a golden retriever."
"Sounds aspirational."
The laughter settles. Looser. Food circulates again.
Someone offers Darla a drink. She shakes her head. "I'm good."
Kyle ducks closer. "Look at you, being responsible. Who are you?"
Darla rolls her eyes. "Please. I'm always responsible."
Kyle points at her cup. "That's water."
"It's hydration. Try it sometime."
East's gaze tracks the exchange from where he's leaned back. He catches Darla's eye. A look passes between them. Silent. Quick. He angles closer. She turns her head.
"Don't," she murmurs, shoulder brushing his arm.
