“No.”
“Say his name.”
“He'll say no. He says no to everything. He said no to a second slice of Dottie's pie once. She still brings it up.”
“He owes you, Josie.” She leans in, fish-light flickering, marker raised. “You've been sitting on that favor for two months like a dragon on one single coin, and you said, and I quote, 'I'm saving it for something he'll hate.'“
I did say that. It felt great at the time.
Lily writes FINN on the list, underlines it twice, and caps the marker with the click of a judge's gavel.
Rest time ends the way it always does, with Atlas sitting bolt upright like he's been summoned and the rest of the room surfacing in waves. We fold the mats. We do snack. We do the post-nap hair repair line, where I fix four ponytails and reassure one child that her sock situation is recoverable. The room runs and I run it, and the entire time, the list sits folded in my back pocket, radiating.
Pickup starts at three thirty.
Junie's mom comes in smelling like the bakery she runs, all three of her alphas presumably elbow-deep in flour down the street, and Junie launches across the room at her with the family portrait held high.
“It's us! And Biscuit!”
“Itisus.” Her mom crouches, receives the drawing with appropriate ceremony, then looks at the back of it, puzzled. “What's this on the back, ladybug?”
I freeze by the cubbies.
“That's for Miss Josie's alphas,” Junie reports, at volume, to the entire pickup crowd. “For when she gets them. I left room.”
Three other parents look at me. One of them, bless her, looks at me the way you'd look at a sad dog in a commercial.
“That's so sweet,” Junie's mom says, with careful diplomacy, and ushers her daughter out the door.
Lily appears at my shoulder with my bag, my jacket, and the expression of a general.
“Okay,” she says. “Quick review. What are you going to lead with?”
“The favor.”
“No, no. Don't open with the IOU, you'll put his back up before he's heard a word. Pitch it first, make it sound survivable,thenremind him he owes you when he tries to say no.” She stuffs the jacket into my arms. “What are you not going to do?”
“Apologize before I've said anything.”
“And?”
“Turn red.”
“You're already red,” she says, and spins me by the shoulders, points me at the door, and through the window, down the block, the firehouse sits in the afternoon sun with its bay doors open like it has no idea what's coming. “Nap time gave us a list. Pickup gave you a deadline. Go ruin that man's afternoon.”
Chapter 3
Josie
The Huckleberry Hollow fire station has two trucks, one flagpole, and a row of bay doors that stand open in any weather above freezing, which is how I'll know Finn's in there before I'm halfway down the block.
It is also a block and a half from the preschool, straight down Main, which means the walk to ruin Finn Morrow's afternoon takes four minutes and passes directly in front of Dottie's Diner at the exact hour Pete refreshes his afternoon coffee.
I see him see me through the glass. I watch the calculation happen, the knuckles rising toward the window, and I do the only thing a woman in my position can do. I take out my phone, press it to my ear, and have an animated conversation with nobody.
“Uh-huh,” I tell the dial tone, nodding seriously. “No, absolutely. Tuesday at the earliest.”
Pete's knuckles hover. Lower. He settles back into his booth with the patience of a man who knows the fish will come back around eventually, and Dottie, refilling his cup, gives me a look through the window that says she saw the whole performance.
