The laughter faded as quickly as it had come.
Reality, as always, stepped in with muddy boots.
Three children.
One half-damaged vehicle.
Six adults.
And a mountain of seed boxes stacked like fragile hope in the trunk and backseat.
Jax leaned against the hood, arms crossed, assessing the situation with the grim expression of a man who had once commanded battalions and now found himself conducting seating arrangements like an exhausted camp counselor.
"The suspension is already complaining," he said dryly. "We add three kids and more weight shifts wrong, the axle might snap halfway home."
Luis glanced at the car as if it had personally betrayed him. "It survived the tree."
"The tree was stationary," Daniel muttered.
The children hovered awkwardly near the roadside. The oldest of them—the boy who had burst from the bush—was trying to appear brave. The two smaller ones clung to each other, eyes wide but no longer terrified.
Xavier looked from the car to the stacked seed boxes.
