“You can stop,” Mr. Lewis said.
Beneath the cards were canceled tuition checks dated after Mom disappeared.
The first was worth nearly three months of our old rent.
More followed, covering almost two years of schooling.
I remembered canned soup, my patched winter coat, and the evening Dad transformed a power outage into an indoor camping adventure.
Mr. Lewis nodded. “He’d promised before you were born. He thought stability might bring her back.”
I stared at Dad’s signature.
That same hand had packed my lunches and completed every school form.
“She took his money and built another family.”
“He paid the tuition directly.”
“That doesn’t make it better.”
“No,” he answered. “It doesn’t.”
He made no attempt to soften what had happened.
I continued searching through the bag.
At the bottom lay a wall calendar rolled tightly into a tube.
Several dates had been marked with red circles.
