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This Much, I Can Give
Little Things
She managed to duck away from the chest-high stack of boxes just before they collapsed onto the school tent's dirt floor with a tremendous, clattering racket. Laura sighed inwardly when she saw that several of the boxes had burst. School supplies were scarce. Unfortunately, they also weren't indestructible.
Picking up a mostly intact box, she worked her way over to the far side of the tent to begin retrieving small items. It was tedious work, but pencils and erasers and paper clips and staples were all too valuable to overlook even one.
When she had filled the box, she returned to the aisle to set it down and found Tom Zarek gathering supplies into another one. "Mr. Zarek. I never imagined I'd see you on your hands and knees."
Standing, he joined her in the middle of the tent and swapped his re-filled box for another half-empty one. "I heard the crash. It looks like you can use some help. For the sake of the children, of course."
Her lips quirked into a sardonic smile. "For the children. Of course. Well, I'm not going to turn the help away." Bending over, she reached for another box, not realizing that her foot had come down onto a half-dozen pencils until they rolled out from underneath her weight, spoiling her balance. "Oh –"
Strong, gentle hands caught her before she finished a nose-dive. "Easy there."
Flustered, she shifted and eased into a kneeling position. "Oh, no."
The pencils had broken when she'd slipped on them.
Reaching behind her, he picked them up. "These will just end up shorter than usual. Better the pencils than you anyway."
"I suppose." But he was right, she admitted as she picked them up, put them into a box, and then looked up to meet his gaze. "Thank you."
He returned her sardonic smile from a few moments before. "Of course."