“Stop!” the captain barked, both arms up, stance wide. It wasn’t a threat. It was a hand to the world.
The driver’s foot made the right choice the second time. The van rocked to a halt. A man in a neon vest—a volunteer from up the road, hair plastered to his skull—ran to her window and put his palms up, the signal they teach for bringing airplanes home.
June turned the kids into a kidney-shaped pause, away from the lip. Luke stepped sideways between the van and the cluster without looking bigger than he was. He didn’t glare. He nodded at the driver with a softness that met panic and turned it into a question that could be answered later. She put both hands over her mouth and cried in a way that belonged to relief and fear at the same time.
We siphoned the parade past, then moved again. The church lot rose like a small hill. Floodlights glowed. Someone had propped the fellowship hall doors open. In the doorway stood an older man with a coffee urn and a stack of paper cups the size of thimbles. He didn’t ask permission to be useful.
