“Ma’am,” he said, “you should probably sit down for this.” “Why?” I said.

“Sal, you’re scaring me.

Why?”

“Because everything that boy has told you about that money,” Sal said, “is a lie.

He isn’t saving for a bike.

He hasn’t been, not for one single week.” The floor seemed to tilt.

My mouth had gone completely dry.

“Then what,” I managed to say, “is he doing with it?” And I braced myself, in that moment, for the worst version of the answer, the version my imagination had built the night before, drugs or theft or older boys or danger.