The morning had started in a kitchen the size of a confession.
Aunt June stood at the stove in her work shoes even though her shift had ended at dawn, because taking the shoes off meant the day had officially asked something else of her feet and she was not ready to grant it. The apartment was on the third floor of a brick walk-up where the stairwell smelled of mop water and somebody's fried onions from last night. The window over the sink looked into the brick of the next building and, if you leaned, a strip of sky the color of a laundered sheet. On the table sat a bowl of oatmeal, a spoon, a glass of milk, and Nia's navy bag, already packed and repacked.
"Eat," June said. "You can't play on nerves. Nerves are not a breakfast."
Nia ate. The oatmeal had cinnamon in it, which meant June was treating the day as a day. Most mornings the oatmeal was plain and the kindness was in the fact that it existed, hot, at the right time, with no speech attached. June was forty-six, broad through the shoulders from years of moving patients and stretchers and other people's emergencies down hospital corridors. She wore her hair in a low puff that the humidity never fully negotiated with. She was Denise's older sister, and she had the face of a woman who had learned to love people without wasting time on the performance of it.
"You got your music?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"The letter from Miss Alvarez?"
"In the folder."
"The form I signed?"