He worked until midnight. With no drawings, no plans, he let the wood surprise him. Just the way he liked it.

SEB SPOTTED VIA from afar a few times that week. But he didn’t like what he saw. She looked slow and sad, and she was constantly alone. Usually he’d spot her with Sadie or Shelly or Grace, sometimes Cat. They’d be sitting next to one another in the teacher’s lounge or laughing over the Xerox machine. But she was chronically alone now. And the one time he went to her office, she’d been on the phone, offered him no more than a polite wave. He’d been certain her eyes were red like she’d been crying.

Something was up. He resolved on Saturday morning that, if she wasn’t at softball that afternoon, he would call Serafine to check and see if everything was all right. Ever since he and Serafine had figured things out via text, that they weren’t a love match, he’d become much less stressed at the idea of hanging out with her. In fact, he’d been toying with the idea of inviting her over again, sometime when Tyler was supposed to come over as well. He liked the idea of seeing his friend as off-kilter and schoolboyish as he’d been a few weeks ago. It made Seb feel a little less like a twerp for nursing this crush on Via. See? Grown men can act like fools over pretty women; it happens every day.

Seb, Matty and Crabby, the whole motley crew, pulled into the parking lot next to the softball fields. Two seconds later, the Sullivans pulled their Benz smoothly into the spot next to Seb’s truck. He tried hard not to sigh. They’d wanted to come to his softball game, of all things.

Seb was fairly sure that they decided to come only after Matty had spilled the beans that no one specifically watched over him while Seb was playing. But it wasn’t like he was running wild! Seb could see him the whole time. Still, no matter what the reasoning was, Sebastian found himself both looking forward to and dreading the thought of seeing Via for the first time in a week and a half under the watchful eye of his mother-in-law.

He’d had exactly zero more heart-to-hearts with Muriel, if you could even call it that. But still, he was very well aware of just how sharp her vision was.

“Remember what we talked about, Matty?” Seb asked his son as he hauled him out of the booster seat in the back of his truck. Crabby hopped down with leonine grace. The effect was immediately squashed by the tongue lolling out one side of his mouth.

“Right. Don’t give Grandma and Grandpa a heart attack while they’re playing with me outside, and don’t make it seem like you let me run wild like a lost boy,” he recited, almost verbatim.

“Right. And there’s a stop at Ample Hills ice cream in it for you if you can manage to pull the whole thing off, capisce?”