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Lucy starts swinging her legs beneath the booth, her sneaker heels bumping softly against the seat.

“Aunt Laurel?” she says.

“Mm?”

“Miss Jensen says stress gives people tummy problems.”

Briggs coughs suddenly into his water. Ashby looks down at the table, hiding his expression.

Laurel’s eyes narrow slightly as she looks at the child, but her voice is normal when she says, “Does she now?”

Lucy shrugs. “You rub your stomach whenever your phone buzzes.”

Silence.

I bite the inside of my cheek hard enough to stop myself smiling.

Laurel looks personally betrayed by the child’s observational capabilities. “Am I being psychologically profiled again?”

“Yes,” Lucy says calmly.

Briggs loses the fight with his laugh first. It comes out like a bark, rough and brief, and it startles Lucy.

“You sound like a bear,” she informs him.

“Fair,” he agrees.

“No,” she clarifies with infinite gravity. “Like an actual forest bear.”

“That’s less flattering, I admit,” Briggs counters.

Lucy studies him carefully for another second before announcing, “I like bears.”

Briggs’s entire expression changes, until he’s looking at Lucy the same way men look at tiny, injured birds when they’re trying very hard not to scare them.

“Good,” he says, clearly more touched than he would ever let on, even under torture. “Bears are useful.”

The kid looks interested. “Why? What do they do?”

“Mostly eat things and frighten tourists away,” I supply, thinking it best not to mention what they famously do in the woods.

Lucy considers my words. “That sounds important.”

“It’s a public service,” Briggs says, flicking me a glance.

Laurel finally laughs properly then, not the brittle exhausted version from earlier but throaty and full.

The sound hits all three of us at once. I can tell because Briggs goes still beside me, while Ashby’s eyes lift immediately toward her.

The silence after Laurel laughs feels heavier than it should.

Nobody says it, but we three all feel it.

The arrival of dinner eases it. Plates arrive one after another, fragrant steam curling from them into the warm light.

We tuck in. Laurel stares at the grilled salmon before tentatively, but before she can do anything like eat, Lucy smooshes into her side. “Will you cut up my pancakes, Aunt Laurel?” she asks almost shyly.

I realize immediately that this isn’t about pancakes. It’s about needing reassurance.