Three dollars and twenty-one cents.
She counted twice anyway.
The least expensive infant formula at the pharmacy down the block cost eighteen dollars. The specific formula Daisy needed—the one that did not upset her stomach—cost twenty-six. Lillian had memorized those numbers so thoroughly that they lived in her mind the way some people remembered birthdays.
Her phone buzzed against the counter again.
She did not even need to look.
The landlord had stopped sending polite reminders days ago. Now the messages came in capital letters and sharp sentences that carried no warmth at all.
Twelve days overdue.
Eviction paperwork ready.
Lillian closed her eyes for a moment before lifting Daisy onto her shoulder and walking slowly toward the window. When she leaned at just the right angle, she could see the distant glow of downtown skyscrapers rising above the river like a separate universe made entirely of glass and light.
Three months earlier, she had not been quite so far from stability.
She had worked as a bookkeeping assistant at a modest financial services firm called Emerson & Tate. The job had never made her wealthy, but it paid reliably, and it came with health insurance and a small desk that carried her name on a neat silver plate.
Then one afternoon she noticed the numbers.
At first the discrepancies were tiny, almost invisible—payments moving through accounts linked to vendors that did not appear in any database she could access. Lillian assumed she had misunderstood something and cautiously asked her supervisor a careful question.
The following week, human resources escorted her out with a cardboard box and a vague explanation about company restructuring.
Now she worked evenings at a neighborhood convenience store, earning barely above minimum wage while smiling politely at customers who rarely looked directly at her.
And tonight the formula had run out.
There was one phone number saved in her contacts that she had never used.
