The next day, the welcome mat at their door got more attention than it had since the day they moved in.
Melissa shook it out, straightened it, then did the same thing again ten minutes later.
Maya kept darting between the mirror and the living room, redoing her braids so many times the elastic bands squeaked in protest.
"Do you think she'll like it?" Maya asked for the third time.
"She'll… have opinions," Melissa said. "That's her job."
When the doorbell finally rang, all four of them jumped.
Albert wiped his palms on his jeans. William jammed his game controller under the couch cushion. Maya scooped up the cat, who had no idea an inspection was about to take place.
Melissa opened the door.
Her mother stood there in a neat coat, gray hair pinned back the way she'd worn it her entire adult life. The lines at the corners of her eyes looked deeper than they had at Christmas.
She didn't step in right away. She looked.
One bedroom door open enough to show a boy's room: unmade bed, a pile of Legos, a baseball cap on the floor.
The other bedroom: a small girlish bed with a stuffed animal army, a nightlight shaped like a moon.
A living room that was basically four walls wrapped around a folding table and two sagging couches.
In the corner, a stack of rebuild pamphlets and a lopsided drawing of a house, its roof too red.
"You all…" her mother said at last. "Live in here."
"It's better than the shelter," Melissa answered.
"Grandma!" Maya blurted, practically vibrating. "This is our home."
That word made something flicker in the older woman's eyes.
She looked down at Maya, her expression softening. "Let me see if you got any skinnier," she said, reaching out to pinch her cheek with familiar gentleness.
Albert hovered near the kitchen like a very tall, very nervous houseplant.
"Ma'am," he said, stepping forward with a mug held in both hands. "I'm Albert. We used to live on the same street. Before."
He offered the tea with the reflexive two-handed respect he used on anyone who could reasonably be called somebody's mother.
She hesitated just long enough for him to notice, then took the cup. "Thank you."
At dinner, the menu was simple: one big pot of soup, some bread, and a stew Albert had made after googling "low sodium recipes" on his phone.
"It's a bit bland," Grandma remarked after her first bite. "No flavor."
"Figured—uh—salt and blood pressure aren't friends," Albert said, cheeks coloring.
She made a noncommittal sound, but her chopsticks went back to the stew again and again.
Maya and William took turns pointing things out.
"Albert fixed that table leg," William said. "It used to wobble whenever you cut anything."
"Melissa makes the rules on the fridge," Maya added. "'Nobody eats alone' was her idea."
Melissa coughed. "That was a team decision."
Her mother's gaze flicked to the yellow sticky note, then back.
After dinner, William cleared plates without being asked. Maya wiped the table in serious, careful circles.
Grandma sat on the couch and watched the way the two kids moved around each other in that cramped space, never quite colliding.
"How do you sleep?" she asked eventually.
"We've got two bedrooms," Albert said. "I'm with William. Melissa's with Maya."
Grandma nodded, either satisfied or saving her questions for later.
She waited until Maya was in the bedroom showing the cat her old toys before she tugged Melissa's sleeve.
"Walk me downstairs," she said.
In the stairwell, the air smelled like damp carpet and laundry detergent. Grandma stopped on the same landing where they'd done their drill.
"I was going to come tell you not to do anything foolish," she said without preamble.
Melissa stared at the scuffed floor. "Figures."
"You always leaned on the wrong people when you were young," her mother went on, not unkindly. "Your father, for one. I didn't want to watch you repeat that."
Melissa swallowed. Her hand tightened on the rail.
"But I just watched that little girl climb into a bed that had been made for her," Grandma said, voice softening. "Saw a man I have never met hand me tea with both hands and listen more than he spoke."
She dug into her purse and pulled out a small wad of crumpled bills. She pressed them into Melissa's hand.
"I can't do much," she said. "But this time… this particular 'temporary' thing you've put together?"
She looked up the stairs, toward the closed apartment door.
"I can see it's at least trying to go in the right direction."
"Mom," Melissa said, throat closing.
"You ever decide it's not," Grandma added briskly, "you remember you can leave. You don't owe him your whole life. You owe that girl a stable place to sleep."
She patted Melissa's hand again. "As for whether she ends up with one more grandpa than she started with… we'll see."
Back upstairs, when the door closed behind her mother's departure, Melissa tucked the cash into a drawer.
Before she shut it, she pulled out a battered old lunchbox her mother had left behind.
There was a note taped to the lid in her mother's careful, old-fashioned handwriting:
"When you have a real kitchen again, use this to make soup for everybody."
Melissa stared at the note for a long time, then put the lunchbox on the highest shelf of the cabinet—the place you reserve for things you don't want broken.
On a fresh sticky note, she wrote:
RULE #5:
Blood family doesn't always understand you.
A new home can give you time to be seen.
She slapped it onto the fridge alongside the others.
Albert, up to his elbows in suds at the sink, glanced over and huffed out a small laugh. "Gonna need a bigger fridge," he said.
"It's okay," Melissa replied. "Some rules are just for us to read."
Later that night, Grandma called from her friend's house to say she'd be heading back out of town in the morning.
"You've got your hands full," she said. "I won't be in your way."
After the call, Maya rummaged through her bag and found the lunchbox again. She drew it into a new picture: four stick figures, a square that was probably a stove, a pot with steam squiggles. Above it, in huge wobbly letters, she wrote HOME.
The next morning, there was mail.
Albert brought the stack in and set it on the table. On top was an official-looking envelope from the city and state.
He read it aloud.
"Due to changes in disaster funding, temporary assistance for this building will end in approximately three months. Some units may be converted to long-term leases."
He skimmed the rest, then slowed at the final lines.
"Priority will be given," he read, "to households with stable family structures."
The phrase sat there, black on white, like a judgment and an invitation at once.
Melissa looked from the letter to the lunchbox, to the rules on the fridge, to the two kids arguing over the last piece of toast.
Apparently, even the government had started using the word family for them.