Then Dash tugged on her sleeve.
“Mommy, I’m cold.”
Whatever argument she had been preparing disappeared.
Laurel picked up her bag. “We’ve been sleeping in the van.”
Ruth glanced toward the parking lot. “The blue one near the south gate?”
Laurel nodded.
“It stopped running two weeks ago,” she said. “The heater never worked anyway.”
I looked at Dash’s oversized jacket. One sleeve had been folded twice to keep it from covering his hand.
“How long?” I asked.
“Thirty-seven days.”
She knew the exact number.
“Before that?”
“A room over a grocery store. Before that, a motel. Before that, our apartment.”
“What happened to the apartment?”
“The building was sold. The new owner renovated. The rent went up.”
“And Dash’s father?”
The question caused a small but unmistakable pause.
Laurel looked toward the pond.
“He’s gone.”
I waited.
She offered nothing more.
Ruth rose and brushed grass from her knees.
“There’s a family resource center on Milton Street,” she said. “They keep two emergency rooms available for nights like this. I know one of the coordinators.”
Laurel shook her head immediately.
“No shelters.”
“It isn’t a large shelter,” Ruth explained. “It’s an old house. Families have private rooms.”
“No.”
“They won’t separate you from Dash.”
“You can’t promise that.”
“No,” Ruth said. “But I can promise that sleeping in a freezing van will not make tomorrow easier.”
Laurel’s gaze dropped to her son.
Dash had placed the stuffed rabbit on the bench and was trying to pull the zipper of his jacket higher. It was already closed to his chin.
The fight left her face.
“One night,” she said.
“One night,” Ruth agreed.
The Milton Street Family Center occupied a three-story brick house between a pharmacy and a church. Nothing about it looked official. There were flower boxes beneath the windows and a yellow porch light glowing above the door.
A woman named Denise met us inside.
