I walked home that night in the cold with an empty envelope and a rage I had nowhere to put.

I remember the walk with strange clarity, the specific misery of it, doing the math over and over in my head, trying to figure out how I was going to make the week work now, which bill would slip, what I would tell Chloe.

I remember feeling, more than anything, small, the way that kind of powerlessness always made me feel small, as though the world had once again confirmed that people like me simply did not matter.

I went to bed that night as low as I had been in a long time, certain that I had just absorbed one more undeserved blow in a life that seemed to specialize in them.