It becomes a boy who believes he is worth feeding, and then a young man who believes people can be trusted, and then a doctor who cannot bear to see a child go hungry, and then four hospitals full of fed children, and then, one particular morning, a briefcase and a folder and a wall standing between an old woman and the people who came to rob her.

I had planted that.

At sixteen, with three dollars I could not spare, I had planted the whole of it, and then I had lived fifty more years never knowing, believing my small kindness had vanished the moment it was done.

It had not vanished.

Nothing kind ever really vanishes.

It only goes underground, and grows, and waits — and sometimes, if you are very fortunate, it comes back up through the earth on the exact morning you need it most, wearing a good suit, carrying the last lunch card you ever handed it, to save your life.

Chapter 7 — Where Are Your Children