Via ignored the way that piece of information made her stomach clench. She hated being the source of any gossip or in the spotlight. Her first few years in the foster system had been spent scrupulously attempting to camouflage herself in all possible ways. Drama of any kind meant getting shuffled into a different home, a different situation. After three different homes, Via learned that keeping her head down and blending in meant that she got to stay put. Even a decade and a half later, Via found herself shying away from anything that might make her a target for drama or gossip.

But she told herself it was natural for her coworkers to be curious about the new girl. And it wasn’t like Evan was some salacious secret. He was her boyfriend of almost two years. It was normal—NORMAL!—that he’d meet her coworkers.

She and Sadie chatted on the walk over to the bar and Via realized that they were some of the last people to arrive. She and Sadie slid into the last two available seats. The bar was funky and dark. It had the typical Brooklyn gimmick to make it memorable and patently Instagramable. In this case, the gimmick was an entire wall filled with slowly creaking gears. Mumford & Sons played over the speakers and a waiter in an old-timey cap completed the look.

Via was mildly surprised to see who’d shown up. Sadie had said happy hour, and Via had automatically pictured all the younger members of the staff. But Shelly, the middle-aged librarian, was there; Becky, the older fifth-grade teacher; and Jim, one of the older fourth-grade teachers was there as well.

On Via’s other side was one of the second-grade teachers Via didn’t know very well.

“Cat Foster,” the woman reintroduced herself. She was probably midthirties, had some gray in her curly brown hair and wore a large, artsy wedding band on her left hand. “How was your first week?”

Almost everyone had asked that same question. “Good. Busy. Lots of things to get in order before I can run the position the way I want to, but, you know, good.”

“The last person in your position wasn’t exactly...organized.”

“I noticed,” Via said dryly. She bit her lip for a second. That hadn’t been the most professional thing to say, but the woman had left her about two hundred disorderly files, some of which were on students who didn’t even attend the school anymore.

Cat laughed. “Well, that’s public school for you. You’ve got the people who join up to make a difference—” she tipped her beer toward Sadie “—and you’ve got the people who join up in order to do the least amount of work possible while still getting the health insurance.” She tipped her beer back, as if into the past, to indicate the person who’d had Via’s job before her.

“How’s your class this year?” Sadie leaned around Via to ask Cat.

Cat dropped her head back and made the sound of angels singing in a chorus. “A-ma-zing. It helps that there’s only twenty-two of them. Last year I had twenty-eight,” she told Via as an aside. “But they’re also just a really good group.”