“I honestly don’t know how to answer that,” Sal said at last.

“What does that mean?” I asked.

And Sal was quiet again for a moment, and then he asked me a question I was in no way prepared for, a question that would turn out to be the doorway into everything.

I have thought many times about Sal making that call, about what it cost him and why he did it.

He was a busy man running a busy diner on a Saturday; he owed me nothing, and he owed Caleb only a paycheck.