Chapter 5: Coats

Mabel didn't sleep much that night.

She lay in the dark and remembered St. Brigid's in January.

The boiler that broke every November and didn't get fixed until May.

The kids sleeping in their coats, two to a bed.

The little boy in the bed next to hers in her first life, who coughed all winter and then didn't.

By morning she had a plan, and she brought it to breakfast.

"I want to take coats to St. Brigid's," she said. "On Saturday. Lots of coats."

Fern put down her coffee.

Hank looked at Fern.

Mabel knew that look by now. It meant something was being decided over her head.

"It's cold there," Mabel said. "The heat's broken. It's been broken since before Thanksgiving. Nobody fixes it."

"How do you know that?" Hank asked.

"I lived there," Mabel said, which was true twice over.

Fern was quiet for a moment.

Then she smiled, very sweetly, in a way that made Hank put his fork down.

"I'd love to meet the director," Fern said. "Saturday it is."

Mabel and Linus went door to door in the building after school.

Linus didn't talk. He just stood next to her holding a garbage bag open while Mabel explained, very politely, about the broken heat.

By Wednesday they had eleven coats.

On Thursday the grandmas from the kindergarten gate heard about it.

By Friday night, there were forty-three coats piled in the living room, and Hank had to step over them to reach the couch.

"I live here," he said to no one.

"Barely," said Fern.

On Saturday they took a cab, because forty-three coats don't fit on a bus.

St. Brigid's looked smaller than Mabel remembered, and dirtier.

There were three news vans in the lot.

And a silver sedan parked by the side door, in the director's spot.

Its trunk was tied down with a bungee cord because it was too full to close.

A sleeve of a purple ski jacket hung out of the gap.

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