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I snort softly. “You’ll wear that note out before you’re done.”

She folds it carefully again. “I keep feeling like I’m missing something obvious.”

“You probably are.”

Her head snaps toward me.

I shrug one shoulder. “Doesn’t mean you’re stupid. Means Maggie wrote it when she was scared and not thinking straight.”

She looks away. “I should’ve noticed something was wrong.”

There it is.

The real thing underneath all the spreadsheets and schedules.

Guilt.

People carry guilt differently. Ashby responds to guilt by working longer hours. Torin disappears into his own head for days.

Mine usually comes out angry.

Laurel hides guilt so instinctively most people would miss it.

“I wasn’t there enough,” she says. “Not really. Maggie would call sometimes and I’d be in meetings or traveling or exhausted, and I just…” Her throat works before she continues. “I kept assuming there’d be more time.”

“I know that feeling.”

Too damn well.

Foster care teaches you that people disappear in stages long before they leave completely. Calls get shorter. Visits become occasional. Birthdays turn into late cards and awkward conversations… and eventually a silence that everybody pretends happened naturally.

Ben used to fight that. Would show up pounding on doors because somebody missed poker night twice.

Family isn’t maintenance free, Briggs, he told me once. You don’t get to stop showing up just because it gets inconvenient.

At the time I thought he sounded annoyingly optimistic.

Now I think maybe he just understood it earlier than the rest of us.

“You’re here now,” I say finally.

Laurel lets out a tired laugh. “You all keep saying that.”

“Maybe because it matters.”

She goes quiet again after that.

Outside the school, parents crowd the pickup lanes holding umbrellas and coffee cups while kids explode across sidewalks.

I spot Tom immediately.

Every protective instinct in my body wakes up hard enough to hurt.

He stands near the school gates swaying slightly, jaw rough with stubble, clothes wrinkled as if he slept in them. Even from the truck, I can see the shine in his eyes and the sway in his stance.

“Laurel,” I say.

She follows my line of sight. Then goes very still. “Oh no.”