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Her cheeks flushed, and she nibbled her lower lip for a moment. He wanted to soothe the spot with his tongue.

“You’re welcome. No need for leaping off buildings.”

She unlocked the door and opened it to let Frizzle bounce up.

“I’ll see you soon, Rissa.”

Her eyes widened a fraction, then she smiled, and followed her dog into the RV, and closed the door.

It took a few long moments to force himself away from his spot.

As he walked to the farmhouse, he realized he felt lighter. Talking some of it out with Rissa had helped. There were shadows in her eyes, and she’d avoided talking about her past. He wanted to know more. Wanted to know it all.

He whistled as he entered the farmhouse and changed into the moccasins that had been set in a slot marked with his name. He was welcome and he was staying.

Now he wanted Rissa to do the same.

Chapter 7

A Question Of Planning

Rissa opened a new unit planning program and titled it Compost. All of her unit and lesson titles were in the form of questions on the website, but for planning, it didn’t matter.

She opened the brainstorming block and started listing the ideas she and Thea had discussed.

What is compost?

Why do people compost?

What do worms do?

What can’t you compost? Why?

How do I start composting at home? At school? In the community?

What happens to the food scraps?

Does the composting smell?

What are the composting stages?

What happens to the compost now?

When her fingers hesitated because she’d run out of ready ideas, she had over forty questions. Way more than she’d need for a week-long unit, but she would develop them all into lessons. That way she could switch it up depending on the grade level and the number of lessons she was asked to teach.

She could also organize different units behind her paywall, tailored to the various grades and curriculum expectations.

She clicked over to her lesson template and filled out lesson after lesson. From experience, she knew to get the ideas down while they were fresh in her mind.

Which Burke had remembered.

Her body tingled at the thought, but she closed her eyes and counted to ten. Later, she could deal with that later. Her job came first. She knew these lessons would be a big hit, so she wanted to record them while her enthusiasm for the topic was at its height.

Work first, think about Burke later.

It took effort, but Rissa had learned early to compartmentalize her thoughts. Her father’s growing temper over the years meant she knew how to keep her thoughts internal—worries, fears, desires, everything.

Still, it took all of her skills to shove thoughts of Burke to the side and work.