Take care of Mark.

Take care of Emma.

Make sure they never fall behind.

I promised her I would do it, no matter the cost, no matter how many extra hours I had to stand behind the counter.

I looked at the faded blue ink on the carbon slip.

Mark said times were tight.

Mark said he was struggling to pay a seven-year-old’s private school tuition.

Yet Mark had a twelve-hundred-dollar designer winter coat hidden in the trunk of his late-model car, tucked safely under his expensive golf clubs.