“Strong brand.”
I bite the inside of my cheek. No laughing. Laughing encourages him.
We make it approximately twelve feet before Miss Angie, Jillie’s teacher, hurries over with an expression somewhere between professional composure and barely contained hysteria.
“Sadie! Jillie! And… Mr. Reid.”
“Colby,” he says easily.
Miss Angie turns pink.
I cannot blame her, which annoys me.
“We’re so happy you could attend,” she says.
“I hear there’s one line delivered with excellent expression.”
Jillie beams like she has been knighted. Miss Angie presses her hand to her chest. “Oh, she told you?”
“Of course.”
Like a six-year-old’s winter recital line is the most important information on earth.
I glance at him. He’s watching Jillie, not the people watching him. That detail slips beneath my ribs before I can stop it.
We enter the cafeteria, and the room basically implodes. Not loudly.
Again, Briar Cove dignity.
But the energy shifts so fast even the children sense it. Parents whisper behind gloved hands. Grandparents pretend not to stare. A teenage boy wearing a youth hockey jacket drops his cookie.
Colby notices every bit of it, but he doesn’t flinch.
He simply walks beside us at Jillie’s pace.
Not ahead.
Not behind.
With us.
Mrs. Bellamy waves wildly from the third row, where she has apparently saved three seats using a scarf, a tote bag, and what looks like emotional intimidation.
“Over here,” she calls.
I lean toward Colby. “You can run now.”
“No chance. I heard there are tiny chairs.”
“You are taking this far too bravely.”
“I’ve faced overtime in Montreal.”
“That will not prepare you.”
It doesn’t. The chairs are absurd. The kind of tiny molded-plastic seating designed to make adults question every decision that led them to parenthood.
Colby lowers himself into one beside me with the grave concentration of a man defusing a bomb. His knees nearly touch his chest.
