“Doc, you keep the hall,” she said. “June, Luke, Rook—volunteer assist only, on my call. Nia, you’re with us if you can walk and carry blankets.”
“I can,” I said, before my legs had a chance to answer differently.
Ms. Patel overheard and looked up, list still in hand. For a beat her eyes flashed—not fear this time, but a teacher’s audit: Who will mind the room? “I’ve got them,” she said, and there was steel in it. “Zoe is my deputy.”
“I’ll count,” Zoe told her, already making two neat lines from a pile of green and blue blankets. Liam’s hand found her sleeve like it had a homing signal. He set the knit cap on May’s head with ceremony and didn’t explain why.
We trotted into rain again. Church lot. Alley. Hardware store wall. The town looked like it had been dipped and lifted, water striping everything the same color. At Mill Creek the road turned to a shallow bowl. Hazard lights blinked from a dark sedan clamped sideways to the guardrail. A white T-shirt waved from the driver’s window like a small flag, shook, then sagged.
