Because by then I had already decided what kind of story this was.

I had decided it in the hug.

And once you have decided what kind of story a thing is, every new fact gets filed under the heading you have already written, and a pawn shop becomes a sweet detail about a boy’s determination rather than a felony with another man’s name on it.

Part Seven: The Tin

He went and got the tin as well, because he had evidently decided to show me everything, which I now think was him trying to be caught.

It is a flat hinged tin that used to have mints in it and it lives in the top drawer of his desk and it had been his bank since he was about nine.