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The funny part came before any of that, out in the hallway. She’d decided, somewhere in all those photos, that Bo was my little brother.

I’ll admit it. I laughed. It’s a good mixup. The kind of thing you tell at parties.

Right up until I watched it land.

Because there’s a moment where you can see a person do the math. Where cute single guy becomes cute single guy with a ten-year-old, and their whole face has to decide what to do about it.

I’ve seen that math before. I know what the good version looks like.

This wasn’t it.

She covered fast. She’s good at covering, probably an occupational skill. But I fight fires for a living. Reading a room half a second before everyone else is the job. And for that half a second, before the smile came back, Olivia looked like someone who’d just hit the one detail she wasn’t prepared for.

Not thrilled.

That’s the word that stuck. I told myself it didn’t matter. We’re friends. Friends don’t have to be thrilled about my kid.

I told myself that through two more songs and an entire sermon.

By the time the band plays the last note, the lobby’s already jammed. The nine-thirty crowd trying to leave, the eleven o’clock crowd trying to get in, the whole hallway turning into the kind of controlled chaos I avoid on principle. We find a pocket of it near the coffee station to say goodbye.

Dottie gets there first, because Dottie always gets there first.

“Olivia.” She takes both of Olivia’s hands like they’ve known each other twenty years instead of one morning. “You’re coming to dinner. I make a meatloaf that has made grown men weep.”

“That’s—so kind.” Olivia’s smile is warm, but I can hear the exit in it. “I actually have plans tonight. But thank you, really.”

Dottie is undeterred. Dottie has never been deterred by anything, up to and including a hip replacement.

“That’s fine,” she says, patting Olivia’s hand. “Luke will find a day that works. Won’t you, Luke.”

It is not a question.

“I’ll find a day,” I say.

Olivia shoots me a look, half amusement, half help me, and I give her the smallest shrug I can manage. There’s no helping either of us. Dottie has decided.

And then Bo, who’s been vibrating beside her this whole time, wraps both arms around Olivia’s middle and holds on.

Not a quick hug. Not the polite kind. The full-body, all-in kind, the way he hugs me when I walk in after a twenty-four, like he’s making up for the hours.

Bo doesn’t do that with people. Yet somehow he’s decided that he likes Olivia in the span of one morning.

I watch her go still.

It’s small. Most people wouldn’t catch it. Her hands come up, hover a second like she’s not sure where they’re supposed to land, and then she pats him on the top of the head. Twice.

She doesn’t hug him back.

“Okay, bud.” I set a hand on Bo’s shoulder, gentle. “Let her breathe.”

He lets go, but he leans back against my leg, still looking up at her like she hung something in the sky.

“Bye, Olivia.”

“Bye, Bo.” Her voice softens on his name, just enough that I think maybe I’ve read too much into the whole morning. Maybe it’s nothing.

Then she says the rest of her goodbyes, promises Dottie one more time about a dinner I can tell she has no intention of scheduling, and slips into the current of people moving toward the doors.