“So the ten dollars kept moving.”

“That seems to have pleased him more than anything.”

Thomas said the waitress had remembered the encounter years later when Walter returned to thank her.

He had made a point of finding her, partly because he wanted to make sure she had not been frightened by his questions about me.

The receipt answered a question I hadn’t realized I still held.

The ten dollars had not disappeared into a wealthy man’s pocket as a strange symbol of charity.