Page 13 of Just a Heartbeat Away

Via smiled at Seb before she looked back down at Matty. “Is Joy your friend?”

“Bestfriend.” Matty frowned. “But she’s never allowed to come over.”

“But you get to play with her at the park all the time.” Seb reminded Matty, brushing a hand over his son’s hair. The Chois had moved from South Korea to Brooklyn about three years ago, and the language barrier had made it hard to make playdates with them. But through clumsy charades, lots of smiles and mutual unspoken agreement, they usually met at the park at 4:00 on Sundays and Wednesdays to give Matty and Joy time to hang out together.

“Right. Do you walk home from school, too?” Matty asked, tugging gently on Via’s hand.

“Yup. I’m only a few blocks that way.”

“Us, too! Right, Dad?”

Seb smiled at his son. He was a brilliant reader and could already draw a respectable self-portrait, but Seb feared directional skills were not his son’s forte. “Sort of. We’re more in that direction.”

“You’re looking limber after our staff meeting today,” Via said as the three of them fell into step together.

“Oh yeah.” Seb grinned at her. “Principal Grim likes those shoulders to stay loose.” He glanced at the necklace on her golden-skinned chest, his eyes ricocheting away. “What’s the blue one for?”

“I’m sorry?” Her brow furrowed in confusion and a little line appeared between her eyebrows. Seb told himself that the little line wasn’t cute.

“You said your red necklace was for luck. What’s the blue one for?”

She looked down at the light blue crystal on her chest, her fingers absently twirling it. “Oh. Apparently it’s for, uh, making friends. Fin thinks I need help in that department.”

“Your best friend thinks you need more friends?”

“She’s more like my sister than my friend.” Via shrugged. “We grew up in the same foster home. Though my foster mom was her aunt.”

“Ah,” Sebastian said as a memory swirled through his brain.

I don’t know what you’re going through, Mr. Dorner, no one can. But I’ve lost people in my family and... I know what it feels like to spin off into nothing.

She’d grown up in a foster home. Had she lost her parents? Seb swallowed through the worst of the humiliation that came whenever he remembered that day.

Neglect.

He ran his hand over his son’s clean hair and took a bite of one of those apple slices in his hand, all to remind himself that he wasn’t neglecting his boy. He was doing the checklist. More than the checklist, in fact.

He cleared his throat. “I heard you went to the staff happy hour, though. That’s pretty social.”

She nodded. “Very social. Those ladies know how to cut loose.”

He laughed. “Yeah, I tried my hand at a few and then decided I preferred my rear end to remain un-pinched by my colleagues.”

Via laughed but her mouth opened in horror. “No! They didn’t!”

“Oh yes, they very much did.” He shrugged. “I didn’t really mind. It was kind of like an initiation onto the staff. They all loosened up around me after that. I think before that there was kind of a fox in the henhouse vibe.”

“Lion among the flamingos.”

“What’s that?”

“Oh.” Via waved her hand through the air as her slashing cheekbones washed over with a light pink blush. “Nothing. It’s just what I thought at that very first staff meeting.”

“That I looked like a lion surrounded by a bunch of flamingos?”

She blushed harder and switched her bag to the other shoulder.

“Daddy, can Miss DeRosa come over for dinner?”

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