She froze with her fork hovering over a roasted grape tomato. For several seconds she stayed frozen, then she dropped her fork and sat back, refolding the napkin in her lap. “I—I found out today there aren’t going to be any open positions I can apply for next year. Not at my school. And so far, I’ve gotten zero interview requests from the positions I applied for around here.” Her voice pitched midway through, but she paused to clear her throat and got control of it again.

Gabe set his fork down and leaned forward. He wanted to tell her it was okay but checked himself. It clearly wasn’t okay to her. Olivia lit up when she talked about teaching, about the small but essential breakthrough moments she’d had with her students, the moments that got them better tuned in to her lessons and caring about their performance in her class.

“I’m sorry,” he said instead. “That’s…tough, I’m sure. Thank you for telling me.”

“Gabe, if I don’t get a job next year…”

He waited for her to finish, but she didn’t. He wanted to tell her it would be okay, but that wasn’t his to say.

Clearly fighting back a fresh wave of tears, she shook it off and picked up her fork again. A foot away, Morgan sat on his haunches, watching her with keen interest.

“Olivia, I believe it when people say things happen exactly the way they’re supposed to happen, even if it doesn’t always seem like it in the moment.”

She stabbed at a half tomato, then wound her fork around a bit of steamed spinach. “I like being a teacher. The only reason I didn’t go to school for it originally was because of fear about not making enough money, and that was me being one hundred percent reactive to the environment I grew up in. My parents… That’s a story for another day, I guess. Like I told you, thank goodness we had my grandparents to turn to, or I’d have spent half my childhood in a car or on someone else’s couch. But when I was a kid in elementary school, I had a friend whose mother was a teacher. Every summer just before school started, I’d get to go in with her while her mom got her classroom prepped. We used to play school in empty classrooms, and I don’t know, it was just so clear teaching was what I wanted to do. Then money was so tight just before college that I made a different decision and majored in something that worked with both my dyslexia and the employment market.