At dawn, Robert was waiting by the door. He handed me an envelope. Inside were two hundred dollars.

“To help you settle in,” he said.

Two hundred dollars. The price of a mother’s love, apparently. I didn’t hug him. I didn’t say goodbye. I took the money, walked out the door, and didn’t look back.

I had no idea that in the lining of my old suitcase, tucked inside a book of poetry I hadn’t opened in years, lay a secret that would turn me from a beggar into a queen.

Chapter 2: The Asphalt Bed

The taxi driver dropped me at a roadside motel on the outskirts of Los Angeles. It was a place where neon signs flickered like dying heartbeats and the carpet smelled of stale beer and despair.

The room cost thirty dollars a night. I did the math. Two hundred dollars meant less than a week of shelter.

For the first three days, I was paralyzed. I sat on the lumpy mattress, staring at the water stains on the ceiling. I cried until my tear ducts were dry deserts. I cried for Henry, who had left me too soon. I cried for the boy Robert used to be. I cried for the foolish, weak woman I had become.

When the money ran out, the reality set in.

“Pay up or get out, Grandma,” the motel manager said. He wasn’t cruel; he was just indifferent. Indifference is the currency of the world.