“Bee, I need you to unpack that box, we have one of the better space heaters somewhere in there. Let’s get it turned on.”

“Okay.”

All around them, people were getting sorted. The dirt ground had melted from the passage of vehicles and feet, turning into muddy dreck. Cars were parked haphazardly around the clusters of tents. Her experience in the tent cities told her that tents were classified by label and number. These were ‘fives’, with tents made to be connected to other tents, forming a star shape when all of those other tents were fives. A mass-heater went in the middle, funneling heat to all of the connected tents.

The control freak in her wanted to get upset at the people who were ignoring what the labels, instruction manuals, and organizers were telling them to do. The spot to the left of each of the tent’s entrances was for vehicles. There were ‘air lock’ flaps for keeping the heat in when bringing in boxes. But people parked in the way, obstructing incoming traffic, and they left their front flaps open for convenience, which chilled every connected tent.

She dug in the box. Toaster, pressure cooker, microwave… the heater was the biggest, in the bottom corner.

“Little Bee,” her father said. “Could you hand me the box knife?”

She looked up from her efforts to empty the box. Her father was by the entrance, in the air lock, and the box knife was in his arm’s reach. He was wearing a suit, but the jacket had been taken off, the sleeves rolled up. No wonder he’d wanted the space heater. He was Japan-born, with very broad shoulders and a broad jaw, a thin mustache and a goatee like an arrow that pointed down from his lower lip to his chin, his hair slicked back with two parts hair stuff, one part sweat.

She looked over at her mother, who gave her a pleading look, both hands pressed together.

She could imagine how that exchange would go, if her dad wasn’t in earshot, or if she stepped away to have a conversation with her dad. ‘Don’t agitate him, this is all hard enough.’

She got up from where she was kneeling, adjusted her coat, and walked over to her dad, picking up the box cutter and holding it out with what felt like a whole lot of irony.

“Can you hold this?” he asked, taking the box knife, and then handing her screws.

“I don’t have long.”

“Thirty seconds,” he said.

She held the screws, drawing in a deep breath and sighing.

It took more than thirty seconds.

“Have you gotten the space heater out yet?” he asked, as he took the screws.

“No, Dad.”

“We need that done. Can you help me lift this, and then get right to it?”

She glanced again at her mother.