Before long, we were searching the apartment, opening every closet, looking in every pantry. In a bedroom, I found a closet full of warm designer clothes. I pulled a thick, woolen sweater down off a hanger and wrapped myself in it, feeling it around me like a hug from my mother. I found a mink coat and ran over to the bedroom where my grandmother stood, pulling it over her shoulders and laughing. She laughed, too. But then the laughter turned into tears, and I wrapped my arms around her, around the fur coat, and held her close. The boy stood across the room, his thumb in his mouth. Jaden had said he’d started that after I left the shelter, and hadn’t stopped since. I reached my arms out to embrace him, too, and, to my surprise, he came into them slowly. His little shoes had stopped flashing pictures. As I hugged him, I felt the cell phone still inside the front pocket of his hoodie. We all sat down on the bed, holding on to each other. After some time, my grandmother’s tears stopped, and we went back to searching the house.

The place kept amazing me. The kitchen was bigger than my entire apartment had been, with a huge, heavy wooden counter that wrapped around it, and shelves and storage spaces made of the same wood above it. The sink and the refrigerator shone deep silver. There was a walk-in pantry the size of my old bedroom. It was stacked up with all kinds of nonperishable foods—beef, turkey, venison, and ostrich jerky; wasabi peas; dried apricots; trail mix with raisins and little buttons of yogurt in it; cans of soup; cans of salmon, sardines, anchovies; glass jars of caviar; candied kiwi fruit; nuts; dates; cereal; crackers; chips; canned peaches, pineapple, tropical fruit. There was every food I could imagine, and some that I couldn’t. I grabbed a jar of caviar. I had always heard about it, and wondered what it tasted like. I took it to the kitchen and tore open drawers until I found a spoon. I opened the lid and dug a spoon into it. It was like inhaling the ocean at Gravesend.