And my son looked at the table and said: “My savings.

And I took the PlayStation to the pawn shop on Fifth.”

I would like to tell you that I reacted correctly to that sentence.

What I actually said was: “Oh, Julian.”

Not which pawn shop. Not how did a thirteen-year-old pawn a console. Not what identification did you give them, which is the question, which is the entire question, which is the question a lieutenant would ask forty-eight hours later in a kitchen on Oak Street and which would make my son’s face do something I had not seen it do before.

I said oh, Julian, and I squeezed his hand.