They said if I just gave it to them, they’d let me go.” His jaw tightened, and set, in a way that was so exactly his father’s that it hurt to look at.

“But that was four weeks of payments in there.

If they took it, the man at the office said the grace period would end, and the notice would go to the court, and it would come to you on Monday.

I couldn’t let them have it.” And there, in that sentence, was the whole terrible logic my son had been living inside, laid bare.

He had not held onto that backpack out of stubbornness, or bravado, or a boy’s foolish refusal to give up his possessions.