Then she heard footsteps.
Nia came up beside her carrying two paper cups of lemonade.
“Grandma said you wandered off.”
“I didn’t wander.”
“You absolutely wandered. It’s a family trait.”
Lena accepted one of the cups.
They watched the river pass beneath the bridge.
“Is this where it happened?” Nia asked.
“Yes.”
“Do you ever think about what would have happened if dispatch hadn’t called?”
Lena watched a small branch spin slowly in the current.
“Sometimes.”
“Do you think they would have kept you there?”
“I don’t know.”
“That scares me.”
“It scares me, too.”
Nia turned toward her, surprised by the admission.
Lena put an arm around her daughter’s shoulders.
“I don’t want you growing up thinking the lesson is that important people deserve to be believed,” she said. “I was able to prove who I was. A lot of people can’t do that quickly. They still deserve someone who checks the facts before deciding what kind of person they’re looking at.”
Nia considered this.
“And the flood?”
“The same lesson, in a way. A label on a screen isn’t the river. A signature on a form isn’t an inspection. A promise from somebody with money isn’t a safety plan. You have to look at what is actually there.”
Nia sipped her lemonade.
“You know you make everything sound like homework.”
Lena smiled. “Occupational hazard.”
Across town, the repaired siren gave one last short signal to mark the end of the scheduled test. Down at Willow Court, Alma Jenkins answered with her handbell, too far away for Lena to hear.
The water moved quietly past the town, carrying leaves and reflected sunlight. It would rise again someday. Everybody knew that now. The town had stopped treating that knowledge as a reason for denial and had begun treating it as a reason to prepare.
Nia took her mother’s hand.
“Ready to go home?”
Lena looked once more at Gate Seven.
“Yes,” she said.
And for the first time in a long while, she meant it without qualification.
THE END
