I want to be exact about this because everybody who retold this story afterwards put a happy sound there.

What Jillian Lin made in her own hallway was a short intake of breath that stopped halfway, which is the sound of a person being handed a thing she cannot pay for and cannot refuse in front of her child.

“Sweetheart,” she said, to Julian, not to Maya.

“What is this?

Did your parents buy this?”

“No, ma’am,” said my son, to his shoes.

“I bought it.”