The storm gave us no time to search. Inez Calder came across the courtyard in a yellow raincoat with two loaves of bread under her arm. Jonah turned the lanterns into place cards, giving every absent guest a name anyway. Theo chopped onions as if the vegetables had insulted him. Steam clouded the kitchen windows, and for an hour nobody asked me what to decide. I had forgotten how much I missed being useful without becoming responsible for the whole room.

Inez found me in the pantry when I was pressing both palms against the shelf to keep myself from shaking. She did not ask whether I was all right. She asked what I had refused that week. The answer came quickly: my neighbor's offer to take Jonah after school, a cousin's offer to repair the boiler, Theo's earlier call. I said accepting help always seemed to create a bill I could not afford. Inez looked at me with the patient severity she had used when she was a midwife. She said I had made exhaustion into a private language and expected everyone else to speak it perfectly.

Her words hurt because Jonah had started listening for my moods the same way I did. I found him later near the hall table, counting place settings twice. I told him he could leave the empty chairs empty. He asked if Harbor House was closing. I said I did not know, then admitted that not knowing was not his job to solve. He nodded, but his small hand kept smoothing the same paper star against the table. I promised we would ask him before any decision changed where he slept or who cared for him. Before I could say more, Theo called my name from the stairs. In his hand was a torn guestbook page, and he was holding it as if it might burn him.