The cheap counter under my palms in Pasadena was worth more than every square foot of the place I had lost, because it was behind a door whose code lived only in my own head, and that, I was learning, was the only kind of home worth having.

Chapter 15 — The Buckets

The next morning, walking Toby to his new elementary school, he squeezed my fingers and asked, in a careful voice, “Does Grandma Rosalind know where we live now?”

“No,” I said.

“She doesn’t.”

He was quiet for a few steps.

Then: “So I don’t have to help wash her heavy plastic buckets when she visits anymore?”

I stopped walking.