“Thank you,” Mr. Hines said, and the word carried more weight than its letters.
Luke eased his back against the cinderblock wall and finally let his knees do what knees do after a night like this. He looked over at Zoe and Liam and May sitting cross-legged on the Sunday school rug, sharing a sleeve of saltines like it was a picnic they’d planned. His face did a small thing I knew not to name aloud.
The floodlights hiccuped once, twice, and held. The wrecker operator came to the door, hair so wet it had decided to lie down for the night. “Bus is gone downriver,” he reported to the captain, not unhappy. “Bridge is lighter for it. I’m going to set the rig out of the splash zone and stop making your generator jealous.”
“Appreciated,” she said. “We’ll be debriefing in twenty, then rotating folks home in small batches as roads allow.” She looked at the room, at the wet banners, at the upside-down world of a Tuesday night fellowship hall turned into a harbor. “We got the precious thing,” she added more quietly, for our corner of the air.
