“Moving means more students can come, and they’ll have somewhere stable to work.”

I watched her consider that.

She had begun to associate the whiteboard and folding tables with the day she stopped feeling helpless.

Leaving them behind felt like giving up something hard won.

“We can bring the whiteboard,” I added.

She smiled. “Then I’m in.”

On our final afternoon at home, the students wrote messages on index cards and pinned them to a corkboard.

One said, I didn’t know community college credits could transfer.