I took my apartment key card out of my wallet and held it out to her.
My Tribeca place, the penthouse I almost never slept in.
“No questions tonight,” I said.
“I mean it.
Just take them somewhere warm.
There’s food.
There’s heat.
There are beds.
Please.”
She stared at the card in my hand like it might be a trap, and I understood, dimly, that in her experience it probably had been, more than once.
She shook her head.
She started to refuse.
And then Tobias tugged her sleeve and said, very quietly, “Mom, I’m tired,” and I watched something in her break and reassemble into the only decision a mother could make.
She took the card.