Beau nodded. “Thanks, Coach. Will do.”

The hunger in the boy’s eyes looked familiar to Will. He remembered his own days as an athlete, attending DoD schools wherever his father happened to be stationed. He could still summon up the almost-painful feeling of striving, wanting to be the best, pushing himself to the limit. Despite the pain, it was also a kind of high that had filled him up, almost obliterating the sense that he didn’t belong anywhere.

He’d just get settled into a school and then they’d move again. When he was twelve years old, his mother had died suddenly, leaving a gaping hole in his life, and exposing the yawning gulf between him and his father. Driven by grief, he had pushed himself harder still, but even the most extreme sports failed to fill the void.

In the navy, he pursued the toughest training courses he could find—BUD/S and SEAL training. The exercises were so grueling that there were days when his soul seemed to leave his body. He found survival mechanisms he never knew he possessed, and during active duty, they’d saved his life more than once. Serving in the navy had been his way of finding a place in the world—for a while.

“Do you miss it?” asked Beau. “Being on the SEAL team, I mean. Would you still be doing that if you hadn’t been injured?”

“I don’t think much about the what-if,” Will said. “I always wanted to live here on the peninsula, and I always wanted to be a teacher. The plan just happened sooner than anticipated. Are you thinking about enlisting?”

“It’d be a big help to my mom,” Beau said.

“Tell you what. Come by my office after sixth period and we’ll talk.”

Relief softened his eyes. “Thanks, Coach.”

He watched Beau heading for the main building, seeing so much of himself in the kid—the eager yearning, the focus. But could he honestly recommend a stint in the military to anyone? It took a passion for service. Or maybe a complete lack of alternatives.

After the incident that had taken his eye, his path had changed almost overnight. He returned to his wife and to civilian life. Now here he was, the way he’d always planned, yet still wanting more. Wanting permanence. Wanting Sierra to find contentment. Wanting a family.

Life was good here. He’d always believed that. This place was part of his DNA, the one consistent element of his peripatetic childhood. As a navy kid, he’d been all over the world, and his grandparents’ place in Oysterville, where he’d spent his summers, was the home of his heart. It was a boy’s paradise, where he could explore the crystal-clear blue waters of Willapa Bay or brave the turbulent swells of the Pacific on the west side of the peninsula. He was filled with memories of riding horses and flying kites on the seemingly endless flats of shifting sand, hiking through mysterious forests, fishing for the freshest of seafood, or gathering the sweet, prized oysters for which the town was famous.

Slinging a towel around his neck, he checked the time and crossed the parking lot to his car. On the far side of the lot, he spotted Caroline Shelby walking toward the administration office with her two kids. He didn’t feel the astonishment of seeing her the other day, a distant memory suddenly made flesh. Now he felt an instinctual urge to connect with her again.

Keep going, he told himself.

Go say hi, he told himself.

Pretend you don’t see her, he told himself.

Ever since bumping into her the other morning, he’d been trying to stop speculating about Caroline Shelby. But school was a gossip mill, and people were already talking. The Shelbys’ middle child was back in town with a couple of mixed-race kids in tow. He’d overheard the attendance clerk saying, with scolding conviction, that Caroline had always been an odd one—the purple hair, the crazy outfits. A misfit in the Shelby clan. People discussed those two little kids and wondered what she was up to now.

He wondered, too.

“It’s that guy.” The little boy with her pointed straight at Will.

She looked over his way, and he saw her stiffen when she recognized him.

“Hey there,” he said, crossing the parking lot and falling in step with them. “First day of school?”

“That’s right,” she said, casting a nervous glance at the kids.

“Cool,” he said. “What grades will you be in?”

The little boy—Frank? No, Flick—mumbled, “Kindergarten and first.”

“I have it on good authority that the kindergarten and first grade teachers are the nicest.”

“Oh?” Caroline offered a fleeting smile. “Where’d you hear that?”

“From their students,” Will said. “Kids are tough critics. I should know. I’m a teacher, too.”

Flick stared up at him. “You are?”

“Yep. I teach math to the big kids. I have to be extra nice because, like I said, students are tough critics.”

“We’re scared,” Addie said.

She was so damn cute. She wore jeans and a bright yellow shirt, and little sneakers with curly laces. He read the words on the front of the shirt. “Hey, that says, ‘Ask me about my superpower.’” He looked at Flick. “Your shirt says the same thing. So I’m asking. What about your superpower?”

The kids looked at each other, then up at Caroline.

“He asked,” she said. The shadow of worry in her eyes eased slightly.

“Watch this.” Addie unsnapped a side pocket of her shirt. She whipped out a thin red swath of fabric—a scarf?—and attached it to the back of her collar with snaps.

“Whoa,” said Will. “Check it out. You have a cape.”

“It’s a superhero cape. Here’s mine.” Her brother took his out and snapped it on. “We can fly!” He took off running across the lawn in front of the admin building, the thin fabric flying out behind him. His sister followed, making a powerful whooshing sound as they zoomed around.

“I’m going to take a wild guess and say you made the shirts.”

“Finished them up at midnight,” she said. “My mom did the lettering on the front.”

“Good work. They’re really cool. Genius, in fact. How did you come up with the idea?”

“It’s remarkable how inspired I can get in the middle of the kids’ meltdowns. And how inventive I can be with old T-shirts and used windbreakers.”

“Seriously? Those are made out of old clothes?”

“And a bit of ingenuity.”

“Every kid is going to want one. What the hell, I want one.”

That drew a smile from her. “Right.”

He remembered that smile, like a light suddenly switching on. The still-familiar sense of easy friendship they’d shared long ago took him by surprise. Those days were over, he reminded himself. They belonged to a past that was gilded by nostalgia, something that could be remembered but never reclaimed.

“I ought to make one for myself,” she said. “I think I’m more nervous than they are. Their school in New York was so diverse, like a mini UN. What if they feel out of place here?”

He wondered about their father. Where was the dad? Had she been married? He wanted to ask her that. He wanted to ask her a lot of things. Instead, he said, “Kids are adaptable. I bet they’ll do all right.” Lame. But he didn’t know her anymore. He spoke in platitudes. “I’ll let you get to it. I hope it goes well for your kids today.”

Judging by all the swooping they were doing, he suspected they would be just fine.

“Flick got into a fight at recess and Addie wet her pants,” Caroline said to Virginia. They were seated together on a bench at a playground near the restaurant, watching the children blow off steam after school.

Virginia gave her arm a pat. “First day of school is always hard. When Fern started kindergarten, she spent the whole day in the bathroom.”

Caroline watched her niece flip herself over the monkey bars with supreme confidence. “And the next day?”

“I think we got it down to half a day. Eventually she settled in.”

“Addie was too shy to ask where the bathroom was. The teacher had extra undies on hand, thank goodness.”

“The sign of an experienced teacher,” Virginia said. “Fern had Marybeth Smith, and she was terrific.”

Caroline smoothed her hand over the packet of papers she’d been given to fill out for the school. Records requests, health forms, permission slips, enrollment histories. “God, I am so out of my depth here.”

“You’re new. Give yourself time.”

She held out the bag of chips they were sharing—stale leftovers from Addie’s uneaten lunch. “I thought the superhero shirts would give them confidence. Instead, Flick got in a fight over his, and Addie lost her cape. I found it in the bottom of her backpack.”

“News flash,” Virginia said. “It’s not about the shirt. Kids get in trouble and lose stuff at school every day.”

“I’m the one feeling lost.”