Nishi laughed heartily into the microphone. “Well, someone’s as excited as I am, it seems. But, please, Mr. Thompson, take a seat before whispers of favoritism ripple through the crowd.”

Ryan’s cheeks puffed like a blowfish as Lucy climbed the stairs to the stage. Her hand rose to her neck, centering the Star of David necklace she’d chosen that morning, the gift from her mom that had been a gift to her from her own mother—passing through from generation to generation. As important to her now as Delia’s and Maddie’s pieces had been to them all along.

Delia and Maddie used the side entrance to go backstage and upload the PowerPoint presentation to the projector.

In the few seconds of delay, a silence descended on the room. Lucy lengthened her torso and teetered on tiptoes, but even in her wedges, she couldn’t reach the mic. She unclipped it from the stand and held it in one hand. She scanned the audience, her heartbeat echoing in her ears. The confidence she’d never once been without seemed to elude her.

And then she saw Gavin off to the side. He mouthed something Lucy couldn’t understand. Then he did it again: “Tin can. You got this.”

“You don’t have to be the best, you just have to act like you are.”

Freaking Gavin Cox.

But, damn straight, Lucy was the best. No acting required. She clutched the microphone in her hand, stepped forward, and tried to steady her rapid pulse by focusing straight ahead. On the woman smiling at her from the front row. Abigail Katz.

She came?

She came.

The Girl Empowered logo, all pink and blue and swirly with enough white space to fill in with whatever color one desired, blazed on the screen behind Lucy, and an energy ricocheted through her.

She pushed aside thoughts of Gavin and Ryan and Stanford and everything that had gone wrong.

Then stopped.

And pulled them all back in.

Because ignoring the pieces that had gone wrong meant ignoring the pieces of herself that had changed because of them. Happy accidents. And unhappy ones.

She channeled Nishi’s warm smile and her mom’s authoritative tone and her own mix of brains and charm that had gotten her this far and concentrated on something she hadn’t fully believed in until meeting Maddie and Delia: a support system.

One the women featured in Girl Empowered needed then, one the girls they hoped would be using the app needed now.

“Girl Empowered,” she began, raising a hand to the screen. “Our app is like every app—made up of numbers and letters, programs and code, and hoping to attract users in an underserved market. But it’s more personal than that, because that market is us.”

Lucy spent most of her introduction describing the app, ending with the talks they hoped to incorporate by successful women. Which led her to her mom.