I lay awake a long time after she finally slept.

Caleb was starfished across half of one bed; Maisie had her fox in a headlock; Sadie slept the tense, shallow sleep of a child guarding something.

I did the arithmetic I would do every night for months — what was in the account, what the room cost by the week, how many days the numbers gave me before they ran out — and then I made myself stop, because arithmetic done at two in the morning only ever comes out one way.

Instead I looked at the three of them breathing in the dark, in a room that smelled like disinfectant, behind a door that locked, and I understood something I have never once doubted since.

The porch had not taken anything from me that I actually needed. Everything I needed was in that ugly little room, asleep, and still mine.

Chapter 4 — The Granola Bar

The next morning I took the children to the Milwaukee County legal-aid office, and a vending machine in the waiting room ate my last two dollar bills and declined to release the granola bar Caleb had chosen with great seriousness through the glass.