She tries to smile. "Hey, baby. How was school?"
"It was okay."
"You hungry?"
"No, ma'am."
She gets up too fast, moves to the stove. Her back is to him. Bryce sees what she was hiding: a folded piece of paper on the table, white, official. He sees the words Notice to Vacate and 30 Days before she turns and slides it under a stack of bills.
He pretends he didn't see. She pretends he didn't see her hide it.
They eat dinner: rice, the last half of a bag of frozen peas. She tells him about a guest at the Marriott who left a $20 tip. He tells her about a math test he got an A on. He doesn't mention the bench. He doesn't mention the woman. He doesn't mention the velvet pouch in his pocket that feels suddenly heavy as a brick.
After dinner, she falls asleep on the couch in her uniform, the TV on low, one hand curled under her cheek the way she slept since he was four. He covers her with the blanket from his bed.
In his room, which is really half the living room partitioned by a curtain his mama hung from the ceiling, he sits cross-legged on his mattress and empties the pouch.
A brooch falls out. Gold. An emerald the size of his thumbnail, deep green, alive somehow even in the lamplight, small diamonds ringing it. The back is engraved in cursive too fancy for a fourth grader to read fast. He sounds it out the way his teacher taught him:
For Ellie, my brave girl. 1962.
Ellie. The lady on the bench had said, "Ellie's still here."