“You encountered a miracle.” God had come through for Sebastian in ways his mother had been unable to. Leah chewed her potatoes. “How did that event change you?”

“It made me realize my life was worth something. I’d received a second chance, so I decided to make the most of it.”

“After you were rescued, how long did it take you to realize that the five of you were famous?”

“Two minutes.”

“It must have been bizarre to learn that everyone on earth was following your story.”

“Yeah. I went into that building a forgotten, discarded kid. I came out a celebrity.”

Throughout the remainder of their dinner, Sebastian watched her with the kind of concentration that seemed to miss nothing. He asked their server for more water even before her glass was empty. When she looked around, wondering where the restroom was, he told her where it was located before she could ask.

In Leah’s regular daily life, there were always so many thoughts and theories circulating in her head that she often found it challenging to focus fully on a conversation. This was extraordinarily true when she found the subject being discussed less interesting than the things going on in her head.

With Sebastian, conversation was more interesting than her thoughts or theories. He had a curious mind, and he liked to delve deeply into a topic. They discussed heart surgery. They discussed math.

He wasn’t content with the vague information she usually dispensed when people asked about math. He wanted her to explain number theory and combinatorics and why she loved algebra.

He’d topped out with calculus in college, but he remembered it well, and that base gave him an educated vantage point from which to view the landscapes where math had taken her.

On their drive home, the dashboard lights glowed against his hard-cut profile. She caught whiffs of his aftershave. She noted the faint lines across the top of his wrists and the five o’clock shadow beginning to darken his cheeks and jaw.

Tonight’s date had gratified the homely, unpopular nine-year-old inside her to a surprising degree. Until this evening, she hadn’t understood how much that nine-year-old wanted to experience at least one successful, fairy-tale-esque night out.

Dylan’s friends’ cars lined the street outside her house, so Sebastian pulled onto her steep driveway and killed the engine. She stepped out of the car and waited for him on the wide steps that ran parallel to the driveway.

Cool weather wrapped her in a strange stillness. She could see light and vague movement inside her house. But outside, no wind at all. No animal sounds. Even the stars were few tonight, and distant. It was as if God had turned a giant glass bowl upside down and placed it over Misty River.

He stopped a few feet away from her, hands in his pockets, illuminated by the exterior lights mounted on the garage.