“The twelve-hundred-dollar loss is painful.

It doesn’t decide whether the boys have a home.”

“I know what I’m giving up.”

“Then don’t let anyone turn the amount into the whole reason for your decision.”

I still felt the loss.

Some evenings I remembered the hotel we had considered and wondered what it would have been like to be tired because we had walked around a new city instead of because I was calculating coats and repair bills.

I did not tell Caleb or Dylan that they had cost me a trip.