That night, the table held no plates or soup bowls.
Just a lamp, a stack of paper, and two pens.
Melissa spread the "work and care plan" from the interview in the middle and laid blank sheets around it.
Albert emptied his wallet like a magician without an audience: bills, coins, receipts, all flattened on the table.
"We need to know where the money's coming from and where the hours are going," Melissa said.
William and Maya dragged over two stools, sitting earnestly on one side.
"You can go play," Albert said, embarrassed. "This is boring."
"But this is our home," Maya said. "We live here too."
Melissa looked at the kids and nodded. "Then you can watch. Not so you worry, but so you see that adults get scared too — and when we're scared, we can still sit down and count together."
They wrote each item on a sheet: rent, electricity, internet, food, gas, insurance, school supplies.
With every number, the paper picked up another faint groove.
"If I add these three night shifts, we get more income," Melissa said, tapping her schedule, "but I'd have three days in a row with only four hours of sleep."
Albert's eyes left the numbers to rest on her face. "And your mood will jump around like a lid that won't stay on a pot."
He said it lightly, but his gaze was serious.
"And your hours?" Melissa asked back. "If you add two more days on the rebuilding site, will your knees hold?"
Albert tried to joke it away. "I've still got two good hands, don't I?"
"If your knees go out, you can't carry soup across the yard in the rain," William said. "Then it'll spill."
Albert laughed and winced at the same time. "Fine. I won't work myself to the point where the soup spills."
They drew three lines across a page: the "we barely survive" line, the "maximum overtime" line, and one in a different color — the "we can still breathe" line.
"We can't live forever on the bottom line," Melissa said. "And we can't push ourselves to the top line every month."
Maya quietly drew a little pot beside the lines, with bubbles floating up, and wrote: "Just enough soup."
Albert saw it and added four little bowls around it. "Let's aim for that pot."
The more numbers they wrote, the less heavy the room felt.
Somehow, every "we can cut this" and "we'll figure this part out together" shaved away a layer of fear. They were learning that fear, laid out on paper, could become a joint project.
"I have money too." William jumped up, ran to his room, and came back with a small tin box.
Inside were his allowance, coins from odd jobs, a few crumpled bills.
Maya, not to be outdone, fetched her own box — the money Grandma had slipped her. She'd been too reluctant to spend it.
"We can't put this into the monthly budget," Melissa said quickly. "This is yours."
"Then it can be backup," William said solemnly. "If one day we really don't have enough, we'll use it once. Like a rescue."
"Like when we went back for the cat at the end," Maya whispered.
They decided to lock both boxes in the highest cupboard and taped a note to it:
"Only for 'we really need help' days."
On the work-and-care form, they finally filled every blank. They adjusted shifts: Melissa took some extra nights but promised two evenings at home each week; Albert picked up more hours at the site but marked clearly which days he handled pickup and drop-off.
At the bottom, under "care arrangements," Melissa wrote, "On nights when one adult is out, the other guarantees to be home."
She looked up. "Do you realize this line is for both of us?"
Albert nodded. "It means no matter how busy we get, someone has to be here — putting a pot on this table."
"And who guarantees you won't both be gone?" William asked.
"That's what we just signed up for," Melissa said, pointing at the page. "Not for the government. For us."
The table full of numbers was cleared again, replaced by plates and bowls.
The lamp shone on the form set off to the side. The corner of the paper curled up a little, like a paper boat ready to launch.
Just as they were about to eat, a commotion rose from downstairs — someone arguing.
"You're never home!"
"I'm the only one paying rent!"
The voices climbed and fell through the building.
Melissa and Albert exchanged a look but said nothing.
William set his chopsticks down quietly. "Compared to them," he asked, "aren't we already pretty good?"
Maya tapped the little pot she'd drawn. "At least we decide our soup together."
They ate slowly. No one left the table early.
After dinner, Albert sealed the form in an envelope.
As the flap stuck, he felt an odd sensation — like they'd drawn the first thin outline of how to live together on purpose.
The envelope would go out tomorrow, into the hands of strangers.