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yells.
    â€œYou’ve always wanted to say that, huh?” I ask him.
    He nods. “Always.”
    I shrug at Tyler, and we walk over to one of the huge boxes. A stack of plastic tubs, each one with a different label on the front, is right outside the box.
    â€œSo, Paige, how long have you been working with the youth?” Tyler asks while we both lean over and start pulling out cans. He pushes the miscellaneous and soup tubs in front of him and hands me the fruit and vegetable tubs.
    â€œAlmost five years.” I drop three cans of pears into the fruit tub.
    â€œWow. So, you must have started right when you got out of high school then.”
    I nod. I moved to Dallas to go to college, found Grace Church, and met Natalie that first Sunday. She was a beaming newlywed at the time, and she and Rick pretty much adopted me as their little sister. They invited me over to dinner that week and talked me into teaching the ninth-grade girls by the time I left that night.
    â€œThe first group I ever worked with graduated last year,” I tell Tyler. “That was a little weird.”
    â€œI bet.”
    â€œDid you grow up in Dallas?” I ask him.
    He shakes his head. “No, I grew up in San Antonio, but then my dad got transferred to San Diego, and I lived there until I came out here for grad school. I ended up getting a job offer from a company just down the street from where I live, so I just decided to stay.”
    That makes Tyler a few years older than me. “What’s your degree in?”
    â€œComputer sciences. I do a lot with software development.”
    I hand him four cans of beef broth. He doesn’t look like a nerd. He’s wearing tan work boots, straight-cut jeans with worn patches in the knees, a blue shirt with a brown plaid flannel shirt over it, and a thick, warm-looking vest.
    If anything, he looks more like a lumberjack. Tyler is built like an upside-down triangle. Wide, wide shoulders, thick arms, and a much smaller waist.
    It’s hard to picture him staring at a computer all day.
    â€œHuh,” I say because I don’t want to tell him I think he should maybe look into a career cutting down trees instead of developing software.
    â€œWhat’s your degree in?” he asks me.
    â€œChild learning and development. I work at an adoption agency.”
    â€œThat’s awesome. My mom worked as a paralegal for a family law attorney before I was born and after my sister and I went to school.”
    â€œOlder or younger sister?” I ask him.
    â€œYounger. By three years. She’s twenty-two.”
    â€œSame age as me.”
    He grins. “You have any siblings?”
    â€œA sister.”
    â€œYounger or older?”
    â€œYounger.” Preslee is yet another testament to my grandmother’s love of Elvis. She’d been voting for both of us to be boys so one of us could be named after the King. So when my sister was born and my parents told Nana they were done with kids, she convinced them what a wonderful name Preslee was.
    Preslee, though, has not fallen in love with Elvis’s music like I have. In fact, she’s gone the opposite direction. She joined a punk rock band, got a tattoo, which broke my mom’s heart, and moved in with her boyfriend, which broke my dad’s heart. The last time I talked to my sister was several years ago. She didn’t even come home for Christmas the last couple of years.
    She is a sore subject.
    â€œDoes she live in Dallas too?” Tyler asks.
    I purse my lips. “No.” Honestly, I’m not sure where Preslee is living now. Last time she talked to Mom, she was touring with her band somewhere in Ohio. A long, long way from home in Austin.
    Tyler must have picked up on my I-don’t-want-to-talk-about-her vibe, because he stops asking me about Preslee and starts talking about how much he loves Pork and Beans. “I mean, they even stick a cube of bacon in there. If that’s not a