I always thought if you worked hard enough, enough would take care of itself. Enough food. Enough warmth.
More than enough love. In our house, enough was an argument I had with the grocery store, with the electric bill, with myself on the drive home from work when I was already calculating dinner before I had even pulled into the driveway. Tuesday was rice night, chicken thighs, carrots, and half an onion if we had one.
I could stretch that to three plates and maybe lunch tomorrow. The math was something I did automatically, the way other people breathe. I was at the cutting board when Dan came in from the garage, hands rough, face carrying the particular exhaustion that comes from physical work done past the point where it stops feeling noble.
“Dinner soon?”
“Ten minutes,” I said, already running the numbers. Three plates. Lunch tomorrow if nobody went back for seconds.
He glanced at the clock. “Sam done with her homework?”
“She’s been quiet, which either means algebra is winning or TikTok is.”
He grinned. “My money’s on TikTok.”
I was about to call everyone to the table when Sam burst through the door trailing a girl I had never seen before.
She had her hair pulled back in a messy ponytail and she was wearing a hoodie with the sleeves pulled down past her fingertips, which seemed wrong for late spring. She clutched the straps of a faded purple backpack and kept her eyes on the floor. Sam didn’t wait for me to speak.
“Mom, Lizie’s eating with us.”
She said it the way she announces facts she has already decided are not negotiable. I still had the knife in my hand. Dan looked from me to the girl and back.
The girl’s gaze stayed on the linoleum. Her sneakers were scuffed down past the point of repair. And I could see, through the thin fabric of her shirt, the outline of her ribs.
She looked like she wanted to disappear. “Hi there,” I said, aiming for warm and landing somewhere thinner than I meant. “Grab a plate, sweetheart.”
“Thank you,” she whispered.
Her voice barely made it to the edge of the table. I watched her through dinner. Lizie didn’t eat the way hungry children usually eat, reaching and wolfing and going back for more.
She measured. One careful spoon of rice. One piece of chicken.
Two carrots, placed deliberately. She glanced up at every clatter of a fork or scrape of a chair, tense as an animal that has learned to watch for sudden movement. Dan, who has always been better at this than me, tried to draw her out.
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