Chester Avenue homes were going for five-fifty, six hundred thousand easy. They’d lived there forty years.
She looked at two devastated people who had exactly nothing left and made the second craziest decision of the night.
“Come home with me.”
Three heads whipped toward her.
“It’s not fancy,” she said quickly, “but it’s warm, and it’s safe, and we’ll figure this out in the morning.”
Grace started crying again, but this time it sounded like relief.
Tony reset the meter without being asked and turned the car toward Sophia’s side of town.
The apartment was small, cluttered with baby things and grief. Michael’s jacket still hung by the door because she couldn’t make herself move it.
James took it all in and said, very quietly, “It’s perfect.”
That night, Grace heated leftover spaghetti while James sat on the couch staring at his empty hands like he’d never seen them before. Sophia rocked a fussy Eli and realized she had just invited two strangers to live with her indefinitely.
And somehow it already felt right.
Morning came too fast.