I told him that I would not waste what he had bought me at such a price.

And I told him thank you, the smallest and most inadequate of all the words, for the spelling bee he had watched from the dark, and the tuition he had ached not to pay, and the twenty years he had spent as a ghost, and the six weeks he had spent, at the very end, finally, as my father.”

Chapter 26 — Walking in the Sun

Four months later, in the first thin warmth of a Boston spring, I stood in front of a three-story brick townhouse in the historic district, newly restored, and watched a workman fix a small brass plaque beside the heavy oak door.