He shook his head. “We were there,” he told her. “That was enough.”
Out past the floodlights, the river carried the bus and the raft and the day’s leftover arguments away. The church lot smelled like coffee now, and wet wool, and relief. I looked at Luke and June and Doc and Rook and the captain and Ms. Patel and the kid with the laundry basket who had promoted socks to the rank of morale, and I thought, We will not agree on everything when the sun is out. But tonight, under buzzing lights and rain that won’t make up its mind, we agreed on the one thing that mattered.
Then a siren in the distance went silent all at once, cut mid-howl—a radio dead zone, or a unit turned off at the edge of something. The captain lifted her head, listening to a sound only she could hear, and the room felt the air change by a degree.
