After a full day of teaching kindergarten, Melissa had barely enough time to change shirts before catching the subway to meet Shay Ryder and Emma Knox. They were meeting with two potential donors for the Stop-Gap Housing program—people with real money and serious questions.
They didn’t ask anything rude. But they were curious, almost gently stunned: How do working people in a city like this end up homeless?
Melissa told them. Quietly, simply.
She told them how her husband, Darius, had died from COVID in the earliest days, when the ER was chaos and Brooklyn was sirens. She told them how she stayed afloat for two years, until Elijah's seizures began—until unpaid leave and copays chipped away everything she’d built. She told them how she’d parked on safe streets and made dinner over a camp stove in the back seat. How she’d tucked Elijah in beside her and whispered stories about camping adventures so he wouldn’t feel afraid.
She didn’t dramatize it. Just offered it honestly, like truth was the most persuasive thing she had to give.
While she spoke, Kent and Jacob were across town—helping Elijah with his homework, making sure he ate, letting him win at Mario Kart, and getting him into bed. Melissa hadn’t even asked. They’d just offered.
Later, when she returned to their unit in Tom Jenkins’s American Heritage Apartments and peeked through the door to check on her sleeping son, she had to stop and breathe.
They had a door. A bed. Light. Warmth.
She remembered what it felt like to crack the car window on hot nights and hope no one looked in.
Things still weren’t perfect. But tonight, she let herself believe they might be heading in the right direction.
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