Page 13 of Her Forever SEAL

“She's good. Really good, actually.” Angie's voice settled into something genuine. “She had a student nominate her for a district teaching award. A freshman wrote the letter.”

“A fourteen-year-old?”

“A fourteen-year-old,” Angie confirmed. “Apparently he sat down and wrote it on his own.” Angie shook her head. “Finn read it when she showed us and spent the next ten minutes very convincingly not choking up.”

Sophia smiled. She could picture it exactly. Finn Crandall standing in his own kitchen, jaw set, eyes suspiciously bright, insisting he was fine.

“She's always been like that,” Sophia said. “Even at fourteen. You could just see it. Caring about everyone.”

Their food arrived. They ate. The conversation moved the way it always did, kids and work and the small details of lives built to run without their husbands for stretches of time nobody could predict. Angie mentioned Lydia and Rylie briefly, the three of them had been working on something together. Angie and Ryle worked about twenty hours a week, while Lydia worked forty since she didn’t have kids. She was a dedicated aunt to Beth and Jack’s four kids.

“Lydia's been good for Nora,” Angie said. “She has infinite patience for the charts.”

“That's because she makes them herself,” Sophia said.

“Exactly. They're kindred spirits.” Angie paused. “Nora has also decided she wants to learn to code. I blame Lydia entirely.”

“Does Lydia know she's being blamed?”

“Lydia is delighted to be blamed. She considers it a compliment.” Angie picked up her coffee. “Beth's youngest gave her a macaroni picture frame for her birthday last month and she hung it up in her office.”

Sophia wasn’t surprised. She had watched Lydia Archer at approximately forty children's birthday parties over the years and the woman loved those four kids with everything she had.

“We should get everyone together,” Sophia said finally. “All of us. When the men get back.”

Angie looked at her. “When they get back.”

“When they get back,” Sophia agreed.

Not soon. Not probably. Just when.

They split the check without discussing it and walked out into the afternoon together. Hugged again in the parking lot. Sophia sat in her car a moment before she started it, the sun coming warm through the windshield.

She thought about Mason, somewhere she couldn't name. Thought about Nora's chart and Captain the not-yet-pet and a fourteen-year-old boy who sat down to write a letter for his teacher.

Her people, all of them.

She started the car and pulled out into the afternoon sun.

4

Kayla shoved her hair behind her ear for the thousandth time as she looked down at her drawing. It was wrong.

She knew it was wrong. She could see that it was wrong. What she couldn’t figure out, no matter how long she stared at it, was why it was wrong. It was driving her bonkers.

One-point perspective. One vanishing point. Lines converging. It was simple geometry. She was excellent at geometry. She had explained the Pythagorean theorem to other kids in her class, and three of them were sitting in this very classroom! So why was her hallway drawing looking like something a second-grader might tape to a refrigerator?

She tilted her head. That didn't help.

She tilted it the other way. Nope, that didn’t help either.

“Nice,” Mrs. Alvarez said, as she paused behind Tyler Brannock's shoulder two seats over. “You’re showing a really nice sense of depth, Tyler.”

Kayla looked at Tyler's drawing.

It was nice.

It had depth.