Miles did not try to pretend he was elsewhere. He opened the door and stepped aside. The room beyond it held folding tables, scarred toolboxes, secondhand laptops, and shelves of licensing manuals. Seven adults were studying beneath mismatched lamps. A delivery driver practiced wiring a breaker board while an older woman corrected him. Nobody behaved as if I had discovered a hideout. They behaved as if I had interrupted a Tuesday class.

Miles explained that he had once studied there after losing his warehouse job. Mr. Anwar, a retired electrician from the third floor, had persuaded the landlord to let residents use the abandoned laundry office. When Anwar became ill, Miles promised to cover the utilities. Eighty-seven dollars had been the average monthly cost that year. The amount never changed because Miles kept transferring it into a separate account, paying bills from there whenever they arrived.

I could see the kindness in the story, which made the secrecy harder to name. Our roof had leaked through two winters. I had declined a dental crown because we were saving. Miles had watched me move bowls beneath the drips while protecting a promise I was not allowed to understand. He said he feared I would make him stop. I told him he had already made my decision for me, one month at a time.

Mrs. Alvarez brought out a ledger from a locked drawer. Every expense had a receipt, but the account belonged solely to Miles, and the room had no current agreement with the building. Tucked inside the back cover was a letter from a developer offering him twenty thousand dollars to surrender all claims to the basement. The deadline was Friday. At the bottom, beside a blank signature line, someone had written our home address. The paper smelled faintly of machine oil and fresh printer ink.