“Can I help?” Zoe asked.
“You already are,” June said. “Count us.”
Zoe counted, voice steady. One for the kids. One for the grown-ups near them. Two, two. In, out. It threaded the rain like a needle pulling a torn edge closed just enough to hold.
We passed the wrecker. The operator worked the controls with two fingers, eyes on the bus like a parent on a toddler near a stair. The cable hummed a note that meant taking weight without feeling heroic about it. The neon strap we’d cut hung quiet, its anger spent, its quilt sleeve ridiculous and perfect.
Halfway up the slope toward the church lot, a minivan nosed around the barricade, hazard lights blinking. The driver—hands white on the wheel—saw the cluster of kids and did a terrible, understandable thing: she tapped the gas when she should have tapped the brake. The tires found oily water, the van yawed, and the back wheels slid an inch toward the soft edge we had just redrawn.
