The Kitchen Table at 2 A.M.

David Chen sat at his kitchen table in Roanoke, Virginia, at two in the morning, surrounded by overdue bills. The layoff notice from the furniture plant still lay folded in his shirt pocket. Three children slept upstairs. His wife, Sarah, had cried herself to sleep hours ago. He picked up each envelope like a man counting wounds. Mortgage. Electric. The pediatrician bill from when Emma had pneumonia in October.…