I had it all backward.

I could not have been more wrong about the shape of what was coming.

But before Sal could say another word, everything on his end of the line erupted.

I have thought about the cruelty of that timing, the way I was left, for the length of a frantic drive across town, holding the single most frightening sentence a mother can hear, everything that boy has told you about that money is a lie, with no explanation attached to it.

In the space between Sal’s warning and the truth I would learn at the diner, my imagination had free rein, and it used it savagely.