Chapter 24: A Plain Can

The rental on Alder Street had a yellow kitchen and a stove that clicked four times before it caught.

Colter was standing over it in his socks, flipping a pancake with great concentration.

"It's supposed to bubble first," I said.

"It did bubble."

"On the wrong side."

"I'm a caseworker," Colter said. "I'm trained to adapt."

The pancake landed on the plate in the shape of Ohio.

My daughter laughed from her high chair, a wet, helpless sound she'd only discovered that week.

She was four months old now and fat in all the right places.

The pediatrician had called her curve beautiful, and I'd made her say it twice.

Beside the toaster stood a cardboard case of fortified formula, twelve cans, with the price tag still on the side.

I had bought it myself on Thursday with my own cash.

I had stood at the register and counted out bills from an envelope.

It was a plain cream envelope, and I'd folded it with my own hands.

The cashier had looked up when I laid down the last twenty.

"That'll be four hundred and eight," she said.

"I know exactly what it is," I said.

She had smiled at me and bagged the case.

The envelope was my first week's pay from First Step, where I kept the books now, twenty hours a week, on a real salary with my name on the check.

Now I took a can down and opened it.

It was only a can.

It was thirty-four dollars of powder in a tin, and it had no weight at all.

I measured it into a bottle and shook it and tested it on my wrist, the way I'd done a hundred times.

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