He lay still for half a minute, listening for Marlo's breathing in the other room. At seven years old, she slept with one arm curled around a faded stuffed rabbit and the other resting near the sketchbook she carried almost everywhere. The rabbit had once been white but was now a grayish cream, its ears repaired with careful stitches in blue thread. His wife had sewn those stitches during the last winter they had shared together.
Everett sat up and put his bare feet on the floor. His phone showed three new delivery assignments and a reminder that the heating payment was overdue. A small notebook on the bedside table held the calculations he had made before going to sleep: groceries, rent, utilities, bus fare, a school activity fee, and the twenty-eight dollars he had set aside for Marlo's Christmas gift. He had crossed out several things already, but the numbers still refused to behave.
He had become unusually skilled at dividing a dollar. A bag of rice could be stretched over five dinners if he had eggs and enough vegetables, and a pot of soup could last long enough for him to claim he had eaten at work. He knew which grocery stores marked down bread late at night and which bus routes were reliable when the roads froze. None of that knowledge had appeared in his plans when he was younger, when making a life had seemed like a matter of working hard, loving someone, and doing both consistently.
At thirty-six, he possessed a toolbox with several missing pieces, a phone with a cracked screen, and a collection of work uniforms that never seemed completely dry before he needed them again. He also possessed a little girl's absolute trust, which was worth more to him than anything else and frightened him more than he liked to admit. Marlo believed him when he said he would find a way. He was terrified that one day the promises would arrive before the money, and she would begin to hear the difference.
His wife, Clara, had died three years earlier, leaving behind ordinary objects that became unbearable for reasons he could not explain. There was her chipped blue mug, a recipe card marked with flour, and a photograph taped inside the kitchen cupboard because Marlo had once insisted her mother should still be able to see breakfast. Everett had not removed any of them. Grief, he had discovered, was not always a thunderstorm; sometimes it was reaching for a second cup and remembering that nobody needed it.
Before Clara's death, Everett had repaired appliances for a neighborhood service company and dreamed of opening a small workshop. He was the kind of man who could hear a refrigerator motor struggle from across a kitchen and tell whether the problem was mechanical or electrical. Clara had managed the household accounts with a cheerfulness that made even bad weeks feel temporary. They had talked about saving for a modest house, perhaps not immediately, but certainly before Marlo was old enough to be embarrassed by the apartment.