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Stay for dinner at the bungalow. Everyone eats a lot. Sina is still in the same tiny shorts and sports bra. She didn't bother showering either

The rice is going and the kitchen smells like coconut oil and the spam is in the pan and Sina is moving the way she moves — fast, efficient, the broad shoulders working, the thick arms flipping the spam slices with a spatula. She hasn't showered. The thirty miles is still on her — the dried sweat has salted the sports bra white and the tiny shorts are stiff with it and her feet have left pinkish-brown prints on the kitchen tile and she doesn't care. She is cooking in the same clothes she ran in and the same clothes she framed in and the not-caring is the thing Lena recognizes because it is the same thing Lena stopped doing months ago.

Lena sits on the couch with Kimo in the harness and the ten-year-old is beside her reading the chapter book out loud — something about a dog and a river — and the eight-year-old is on the floor working the glove and the three-year-old is asleep against Lena's thigh. The bungalow is small and warm and the windows are open and the Gainesville air is thick and the ceiling fan clicks and the boy is humming against her chest and the reading is steady and the evening is coming.

Dinner is laplap and rice and spam and fried plantains and a pot of corned beef that Sina opened with a knife and a hard twist. The table is small and the chairs are mismatched and everyone sits close. Lena eats the way Lena eats — large and deliberate, the hands working, the belly resting against the table edge. Sina eats the same way. The portions are not small. The ten-year-old eats two plates and the eight-year-old eats three and the three-year-old wakes up and eats a whole plantain with her hands and gets rice on her face and doesn't care. Kimo nurses during dinner and the nursing is the letdown that is sharp and fast and the boy eats the way everyone is eating — large.

Sina is across the table and the sports bra is still soaked and the salt lines are visible and the tiny shorts are still stiff and she is eating her third plate of laplap with her bare bloody feet on the floor and her elbows on the table and the not-caring is complete. She looks at Lena and Lena looks at her and the look is the look of two women who ran thirty miles barefoot on concrete and framed walls and didn't shower and are eating with their elbows on the table and the look says everything without saying anything.

"You're staying tonight," Sina says. It is not a question.

"I'll take the couch," Lena says.

"The kids will be on you by morning. They do that. They pile."

"I know," Lena says. She does know. She has been here before. The piling is the thing the kids do — the slow gravitational drift toward warmth and body heat during the night and by morning there are three children on top of you and the three-year-old is on your chest and the ten-year-old is on your legs and the eight-year-old is somehow sideways. Kimo hums against her and the humming is the sound of the evening and the fan clicks and the bungalow is warm and full and the structure holds.