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judged for the choices
he made?
    Max didn’t respond with any enthusiasm.
    “Don’t you want to know what it is?”
    Max lifted a shoulder as Leo opened the back
door and helped him into the booster.
    “Kid, you suffer from a lack of curiosity.
Not like your mom. When I told her I had a surprise—” He stopped
himself when Max’s eyes widened. Leo rubbed his own chest,
surprised by the lack of pain at mentioning her. The words had just
rolled off his tongue. He tried to remember the last time he’d
spoken of her, the last time he’d spoken of her to his son. He’d
avoided doing so because he worried about the pain it would cause,
but maybe—maybe that was the wrong tactic. So he continued. “She
would dance around and pester me until I couldn’t take it anymore
and I would give her the surprise. Made me want to give her
surprises all the time.” He smiled at the memory, double-checked
Max’s buckle, and looked up into the kid’s face.
    Tears ran down Max’s cheeks. “I miss
her.”
    Leo curved his hand around his son’s head,
drew it forward and pressed a fierce kiss to his forehead. “So do
I, buddy.”
     
    ***
     
    Trinity watched the interaction through the
glass door and her heart broke. She knew the story, of course.
Max’s mom’s car had broken down on the side of the road. A driver
had swerved into her while she was waiting for the tow truck and
she was killed. Max’s father had been on assignment in Iraq and
couldn’t come back for days. The child’s only security was his
grandparents. And even when Leo had shown up, he’d been so wrapped
up in his own grief he didn’t know how to deal with Max’s. Or Max.
When the child started acting out, Leo shipped him to his parents
and bailed.
    Only the story no longer seemed so
black-and-white. She didn’t know why she expected any story to.
Perhaps she’d lived with her parents too long.
    She turned back to her office. Thursday
afternoon meant faculty meeting and she was afraid she knew the
topic. Their enrollment was terrible as families moved away, to the
cities where the jobs were. Bluestone Elementary had gone from
having two teachers per grade level to one, and now they were
considering combining grade levels—kinder and first, second and
third, fourth and fifth, which meant three teachers losing their
jobs. She was lucky she’d been able to hold onto her job as long as
she had. Honestly, she’d rather lose hers than see Mrs. Conover,
who had a young family, or Mrs. Dennis, whose husband was one of
Lily Prater’s employees, and his job was on the edge. Trinity at
least lived with her parents, though she had been saving for three
years to get her own place. She just couldn’t decide if she wanted
to live that close to her parents.
    Oh, well, her decision might be made for her
in a few minutes.
     
    ***
     
    Trinity walked out of the faculty meeting
nearly two hours later no more certain than when she’d walked in.
The school board would allow them to continue the rest of the year,
three more months, on the current budget, though it strained the
coffers. But next year, if the situation didn’t drastically
improve, they’d make the changes, and in addition, Trinity would be
a floating counselor, serving the elementary, middle and high
school in Bluestone one week, and then work in nearby Wilson
another. Okay, nearby but not nearby enough, and not in the winter.
Ugh. And she preferred working with the younger children, though
her job sometimes gave her an unexpected twinge, especially when
she spent time in a first grade class and saw the enthusiasm and
innocence of the children. She couldn’t help wondering what kind of
personality her daughter had.
    She shook herself back to the present. She
didn’t expect that any of the solutions presented last night were
going to save her job, or Mrs. Conover’s, or Mrs. Dennis’s. What
had that lady on the news called it? The new reality.
    She didn’t want to go home yet, where the
news was