That would have made the night into a lesson about being rewarded for goodness, and I had lived too long to believe the world worked that way.

Instead I told them about a young mother with wet socks and two sleeping babies who saw an older man sitting alone.

I said the young mother wasn’t brave every day.

She was frequently impatient, afraid, and unsure of herself.

On that particular evening, however, she had noticed somebody else’s loneliness while carrying plenty of her own.

“It was a choice,” I said.

“Not a bargain.”