It has cost nothing the entire time.

And when people in our town tell this story — and they still do, there is a version of it going round with a Gibson and a breakfast spread and eight officers in a living room and a thirteen-year-old boy who taught a whole community what generosity looks like — I let them, for about eight months, because the warm version had my son in it as a hero and I wanted that.

I do not let them any more.

Because what my son actually did was get everything wrong.