Look at the Dates

How temporary, he said.

I don’t know.

He waited.

I thought they needed it, I said.

Do they still?

I don’t know.

And that answer, that plain small I don’t know, sat between us on the counter beside the shoes, because after three years of sending the money I genuinely could not tell him what it was for.

He slid the folded envelope into his shirt pocket with the warehouse receipts, each of those squared and dated in his small hand, and he buttoned his cuff and asked where I was going, because he could see I had already reached for my purse.