Our apartment sat above a bakery and a small dental office. The window frames rattled when delivery trucks went past, the radiators worked when they felt like it, and the kitchen wasn’t wide enough for two adults to stand side by side.

It still felt like home.

I worked early shifts at a diner downtown and cleaned office buildings three evenings a week. Weekends, I delivered groceries whenever my old sedan agreed to start.

Some mornings I left before Toby opened his eyes; some nights I got back long after he’d fallen asleep.

But I never missed a parent-teacher conference. I packed his lunches late at night with small handwritten notes tucked under the sandwiches, and I checked his math homework past midnight with my eyes burning.

Toby saw more than I ever wanted him to. He knew when I ate plain cereal for dinner because there was only enough chicken for him and his grandmother.