Tyler copied her, but he grabbed both her cheeks with his talon fingers, squeezed too hard. He was always taking the game too far. Leah wondered how she should even begin to teach him to notice the boundaries people made for themselves, lines he was always crossing, without damaging his sense of himself in the world. She thought how small his heart must be. How fragile. “No fish. Treats!”

“Okay, buddy. Treats it is.”

Tyler helped her with his car seat straps, went back to playing calmly with his Hot Wheels cars. She turned the key in the ignition, took one final glance around the site. It took time and patience to calibrate the balance of a disrupted system, to discern which investments would yield an optimal outcome. She had spent years working through the Riverside project, which everyone agreed was a success, but she had yet to figure out a way to apply these principles to the tattered remnants of her family life. It had been months since she'd been to a coffee shop, since she'd been anywhere but Tyler's day care, work, the small courtyard playground in their apartment complex. People looked at her differently now—suspicious, judgmental, sometimes pitying. Leaving her apartment for any reason, she considered disguise—I could wear a mask. Pull a sheet over my head. Find a convincing false mustache—but the anonymity she craved more than anything was impossible to expect. Everyone in this town knew her business. Everyone was some kind of witness. Still, she wanted the sweet vanilla syrup, the creamy thickness of whipped cream on her tongue. She wanted the tiny vases of carnations—pops of color against the gray, clouded light, the local art like rainbow magic on the wall. Like Tyler, she wanted a treat, a small pleasure, a baby step back toward normalcy.

THE COFFEE SHOP WAS just as she remembered it—cozy, half crowded, the layered smells of coffee and baked goods oily and deep. The baristas, a rotating cast of local teenagers with big-city aspirations and acid wit, were flirting for tips. Leah felt her heart rate slow, her breathing normalize. See? Nothing to be afraid of. Tyler pressed his face against the glass of the bakery display, his eyes glittery, overwhelmed at the choices in front of him.