“No, sweetheart.

I think something new started today.”

She did not tell Idelle the whole of it that night — not the accusation, not the six pairs of eyes, not the terrible moment of opening the bag.

That could wait.

What she carried home instead was the card in her pocket and the strange, unfamiliar feeling that the ground under her family might be turning solid at last.

For six months she had been holding everything up alone, by main strength, with no help she could count on and no end she could see — the pension stretched past breaking, the legal tangle she was navigating with library books and guesswork, the daily fear that one bad month would tip them all onto the street.