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She moved between the tables. She stopped at Marcus’s table and looked at what he was doing, a Spider-Man, obviously, but rendered with a color sense that was doing something interesting, red bleeding into purple at the edges in a way she didn’t think he’d done on purpose but that worked better than if he had.

“I like what’s happening here,” she said, pointing to the purple edge.

He looked at it. “I didn’t mean to do that.”

“I know. Do it more.”

He looked at her. He looked at the paper. He pressed the red pastel harder into the edge and the purple deepened and he made a small sound of surprise that was one of the best sounds she knew, the sound of someone discovering something.

She moved on.

* * *

Lauren appeared in her doorway at noon, when the kids had gone to lunch and the room had returned to its good quiet.

“How was it?” Lauren asked.

“Good.” Allison was already reorganizing the supply station at table three, which had been thoroughly destabilized by the morning’s activity. “Really good, actually.”

Lauren came in and sat on the edge of the nearest table. She had the slightly frazzled look of a fourth-grade teacher at noon on the first day of school, which was a different kind of frazzled than any other kind. “I have a kid this year who has already asked me four questions I don’t know the answer to and it’s been three hours.”

“What kind of questions?”

“The kind that start with but why and then don’t end.” Lauren stole a pastel from the supply station and examined it. “How’d yours go?”

“There’s a girl in the second session, Sophie, I need to keep an eye on her. In the good way. She’s paying attention to everything.” Allison moved to the next table. “And there’s a kid named Marcus who has an instinct for color that I’m very interested in.”

Lauren was quiet, in the way that meant she was about to say something that was an observation rather than a question. “You remember all their names.”

“I do.”

“On day one.”

“It’s easier than people think.”

Lauren looked at her with the expression Allison was beginning to recognize, the one where whatever was on Lauren’s face had gotten there before she’d decided whether to let it, and said, “You’re going to be the teacher they remember.”

Allison didn’t know what to do with that, so she moved to the next supply station.

“Have you eaten?” Lauren said. “There’s a very tragic sandwich in my bag that I was going to eat in my classroom feeling sorry for myself. We could do that together.”

“That sounds perfect,” Allison said, and meant it.

* * *

She walked home after school along a different route than her usual, partly to learn the town and partly because Lauren had mentioned that Cherry Street added about four minutes but went past a particularly good view of the lake, which turned out to be accurate. She took the four minutes.

She was heading back to Main Street, cutting through the block behind Founders Square, when she saw him.

He was outside Colter Hardware with his back partly to her, loading something into the bed of his truck, lengths of lumber, from the look of it, the kind of careful organized loading of a man who’d done it enough times to do it efficiently. He had his jacket off, flannel sleeves rolled to the forearm, and she could see even from across the street the economy of the way he moved, nothing wasted, everything purposeful.

She should walk past. She was going to walk past.

He turned slightly and saw her.

For a moment neither of them moved.

She lifted her hand in a small wave. The kind that said hello, I see you, no need to make anything of this.