Jack guided the girl to the middle bench. She’d stayed dry until now. He wished his small fishing boat had a canopy,something to break the rain spiking her eyelashes. He pulled off his wet ball cap and tightened the band to the smallest notch before placing it on her head and helping her into a life jacket.
Omar had helped the older woman aboard and was still getting her situated, so Jack returned for the mom. But at the sight of him reaching for her, she stumbled gracelessly into the boat with her bags and her birds. She willfully ignored the hand he offered and nodded at the waterlogged stuffed bunny he’d set down. “Thank you for getting Beans.”
He passed the bunny to the girl. She was trembling.
The ride back out to the freeway felt much longer this time. Omar sat up front with the older lady. Directly facing Jack, the mom and kid huddled together. Every time she set down the birdcage to hold the girl tighter, it slid or tipped, and she had to pick it back up. Finally, Jack reached for it, intending to brace the cage between his boots, but the daughter scrambled forward, taking his extended arm as an invitation, and climbed up beside him. To his surprise, she hugged him fiercely. Jack’s arm hovered, uncertain, above her.
“Briar.” The mom winced apologetically at Jack. “I’m sorry. Briar, honey, come back.”
But Briar didn’t let go. He could feel her tiny body shaking, and he didn’t think, just tucked her more securely into his side for the rest of the ride.
Volunteers met them at the drop-off point and ushered the passengers from his boat toward a fleet of school buses. Jack waited until they were safely up the steps of one.
Only then did he realize the little girl was still wearing his hat.
3
Tansy
Four Months Later
After four months of temporary assignments at other libraries around Houston, Tansy’s first day back at her home branch was bittersweet. Not only had half of her coworkers opted not to return, but the building itself remained gutted and dark. Tansy passed by the empty shell of it on her way to the shared parking lot between Grant Gellman Library and Lerner Botanic Gardens, unable to block out memories of her last time here, five days following the storm, when she and her work family trudged into the musty building to retrieve anything salvageable.
The thin gray carpet, squelching under their feet and caked with fine orange silt.
The Wish Tree, tipped on its side, all the handwritten wishes torn off or turned to soggy pulp.
The books.Thousandsof books, tossed off their shelves, spines splayed violently where they’d fallen, damp pages stuck in inseparable clumps.
In the kitchenette, the water had swept their personal mugs from the upper cabinet like a temperamental cat. Tansy’s bright yellowTmug. Irma’sHEA or GTFO. Kai’sAsk Me About My Gay Agenda. All in broken pieces littering the tile floor and smothered in the same silty sludge.
In the office, their work sweaters had been yanked off their hooks and left in a sopping heap, the arms twisted and tangled together like they’d fought to hold on to one another.
Ugh. She didn’t want to think of the storm. She wanted to get on with their fresh start.
Which was really more of a last chance.
When their expected renovation announcement ended up being an officialclosureannouncement, Tansy had appealed to the county commissioner. His solution was to move the library into the adjacent botanic gardens. It bought them four months.
Four months to prove her library was an essential county institution that deserved to be renovated and reopened, despite its history of flooding and the loss of its entire collection.
If not, the branch would permanently close, and Tansy’s work family would break up again, for good. After everything else she’d lost—her home, which had to be stripped to the studs, her car, and all of her and Briar’s belongings—Tansy refused to lose one more thing.
Except she’d have to endure a little salt in her wound, apparently. In the library staff’s absence, the gardens’ staff had taken to manspreading their trucks, crossing lines to occupy multiple spaces in the communal lot.
Thesewere the people she was now at the mercy of. GuyslikeJack Reid, whose rudeness during the storm she’d never had the chance to report, saddled with more pressing concerns like where she and her daughter would sleep. Although he’d also been the one to rescue them from the floodwater later that night, he’d managed to make her feel even smaller while doing it. If she could work inside the gardens without ever seeing that asshole, she’d consider it a miracle.
This was some truly wishful thinking, though, because she was set to meet him—she checked her watch—right now.
Late on her first day back. Not exactly the show of competence she’d intended as the new interim branch manager.
“Oh, thank God!” Marianne called a few minutes later as Tansy jog-walked up the landscaped flagstone path and through the entrance gate. “We thought maybe you quit.”
Tansy’s skirt, a flowy, secondhand number that still held a hint of patchouli despite several washes at the Laundromat, snagged on a bush. Her ballet flats—also secondhand—were already rubbing blisters on her heels. “Quit? No, I just had to park in the back lot,” she explained, yanking her skirt free from the prickly bush and leaning into greeting hugs from Marianne, Irma, and Kai.
Kai, who had shaved one side of their head and dyed their remaining chin-length hair teal since Tansy had last seen them, bent to remove a clinging twig from Tansy’s skirt. “Mariannethought you quit. No one else thought that.”
“Well, everyoneelsequit,” Marianne said.
