The apartment complex had been old before the fire. Now it was old and crowded.
Paint peeled from the railings. The grass in the courtyard was more dirt than green. Someone had tried to make it cheerful by hanging plastic flowers from the balconies.
Inside, though, the unit they were assigned to was clean. Two small bedrooms. A worn couch. A kitchenette with a stove that worked if you jiggled the knob.
"Smells like somebody else's dinner," William said, wrinkling his nose.
"Give it a week," Albert said. "It'll smell like ours."
He set the box of photo albums on the counter and looked around. Four walls. A door. A deadbolt. It didn't look like much.
It looked like a chance.
At the folding table that doubled as a front desk, the housing coordinator had pushed a stack of papers toward them.
"Head of household?" she'd asked, pen poised. "We need one name here."
Melissa's hand had twitched toward the line. "I've always had Maya with me. I'll put—"
"Landlords look at income and credit," Albert had interrupted without thinking. "My file might make this easier. I've got pay stubs, W-2s—"
"And I没有?" she'd shot back.
"That's not what I meant," he'd said quickly. "You work harder than I do."
They'd gone back and forth in a tense whisper while the kids pretended not to listen.
Finally, William had cleared his throat.
"Could you put all our names?" he'd asked the coordinator. "Like… head of four heads?"
She'd laughed, for the first time that morning. "I wish. But the system's old. It only understands one head." She'd tapped the comments box. "You can write whatever you want down here, though."
Melissa had taken the pen. Her handwriting wasn't fancy, but she wrote slowly, pressing hard enough to leave an imprint on the carbon copy.
Two adults, two kids, one home.
Temporary, but real.
Now, she stood in the doorway of the smaller bedroom, watching the kids claim territory.
"I want the bed by the window," Maya announced.
"Fine. I get the top bunk," William said. "Better view for guarding."
"Guarding?" she echoed.
"In case of… you know." He waved a hand in the general direction of the mountains.
Maya considered this, then nodded solemnly. "Okay. But if there's another fire, you grab Mr. Whiskers. I'll grab Mom."
"Deal."
In the kitchen, Melissa dug through a box labeled "Random Stuff." She found a single dented pot, two mismatched bowls, and a packet of salt.
She filled the pot with water, dropped in the last of the pasta she'd taken from the shelter pantry, and cut up a carrot so thin you could almost see through it.
Albert leaned against the doorway. "Gourmet, huh?"
"You want gourmet, you can cook," she said, but there was a smile at the edge of it.
He held up his hands. "Hey, I know my place. I'm the dishwasher."
When the soup was ready—if you could call it soup—they all sat cross-legged on the floor around a cardboard box that pretended to be a table.
"Before we eat," Albert said, "we're playing a game."
He pointed his fork at each of them in turn. "Scariest moment of the day. And what you're most grateful for."
"Do we have to?" William asked.
"Yep. House rule number one. Try again, smart guy."
William squinted at his soup. "Scariest was when the sky went red and… I thought I'd never see you again." He flicked a glance at his dad. "Most grateful is… we went back for the cat, I guess."
Maya hugged Mr. Whiskers, who was now sitting like a king on a folded blanket.
"Scariest was when Mom didn't answer her phone," she said. "Most grateful is… Albert didn't leave me at school."
Melissa's spoon stopped halfway to her mouth.
"Scariest," she said slowly, "was being in the ER and hearing a kid cry and thinking, for a second, it might be you. And I couldn't get to you." She swallowed. "Most grateful is… opening that shelter door and finding out I still had two more people to worry about."
Albert pretended to scowl. "Three people, minimum. I'm very high maintenance."
Maya giggled.
He twirled his plastic fork in the soup. "Scariest was turning the truck around. Thinking, if I screw this up, my kid loses everything. Again." He knocked his knee against William's. "Most grateful is realizing he was willing to share his bed with a cat and a stranger."
William rolled his eyes. "She's not a stranger."
Maya blinked. "Who, me or the cat?"
"Yes," William said.
They all laughed. For a second, the room felt too small to hold it.
A knock at the door cut the moment in half.
Albert set his bowl down and stood. "Stay put," he said, out of habit more than fear.
He opened the door.
A woman in a navy blazer stood in the hallway, clipboard in hand, hair pulled back so tight it made her look permanently alert. A badge on her lapel read Family Services.
"Mr. Jones?" she asked.
"Yeah. That's me."
She leaned to look past him into the apartment—two kids on the floor with mismatched bowls, a Black woman in a faded T-shirt, a cat staring back with unimpressed green eyes.
"I'm here for your post-disaster family assessment," she said. "Routine." Her smile was polite and tired. "Mind if I step in?"
Albert stepped aside.
She crossed to the coffee table, spreading her forms out like she was laying cards.
"All right," she said, clicking her pen. "Let's start with something simple."
Her eyes moved from Albert to Melissa to the kids and back again.
"What exactly," she asked, "is your relationship to each other?"
Albert felt every muscle in his body lock.
Behind him, he could hear William's breath, see Maya's fingers curl tighter in the cat's fur.
No one answered.
The lamp above the table hummed softly, struggling against the cheap wiring.
For the second time in as many days, they stood at the edge of a line.
And this time, it wasn't fire on the other side.