A boy earning his own way.

It was a good story, and it was even partly true, and it let me feel, in the middle of everything else that was hard, that at least I was raising him right.

I had no idea that the job I was so proud of was not the beginning of a bicycle but the beginning of a secret, that every Saturday shift I sent him off to with a packed lunch and a reminder about his homework was carrying him deeper into a burden I did not know existed.

I have forgiven myself for not knowing; a person cannot see what is being deliberately hidden from them, and Caleb hid it with a skill that still astonishes me.