Sal gave my son that.

And watching Caleb stand there, small and grease-smudged, listening to a man he respected call him the finest worker he had seen in thirty years, I saw something in my boy’s face begin, tentatively, to unclench, and I was more grateful to that diner owner than I have ever been able to properly say.

Chapter 25 — An Illegal Debt

Then Sal reached into the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out a thick manila envelope, and laid it on the prep table beside Mark’s journal, and I looked at it, not understanding.

“When I finally understood what was going on here, about an hour ago,” Sal said, “the first thing I did was make a phone call.