Back home, Amelia spread her notes across the entire kitchen counter like a general laying out maps before a battle. Each sheet, scrawled in her quick, neat handwriting, was part of Alan's shipment plan , a project she'd been tackling since lunch with the kind of determination usually reserved for surgeries and emergencies. This plan was different from her usual paperwork. It came with a hundred tiny hurdles, unexpected obstacles she hadn't dealt with before. But Amelia wasn't one to give up halfway. If she could manage three kids alone for six years, she could certainly find a solution to this logistical nightmare.
Her focus was so intense that the world outside the neat margins of her papers ceased to exist. She was mid-thought , adjusting the numbers in a column to fit the revised delivery times , when a soft, sleepy voice broke through her concentration.
"Mom?"
