“I’m seventy-six,” he said.

“I remember every house I promised to fix and couldn’t.”

We arranged to meet in a public library, where Samuel arrived carrying a battered green binder.

He spread its contents across a table: work orders, photographs, donor letters, and copies of checks that had been returned unpaid.

“This is what I still have,” he said.

“I don’t know why the money was gone.

I just know Walter was brokenhearted.”