She refused, flatly, to let me finance any part of it.

She secured a small-business loan on her own name and her own record, and she built the thing with her own hands, and I understood that this too was part of it — that she needed the shop to be hers, unmixed with me, the way she needed her forgiveness to be hers to withhold.

I began coming by on Tuesday mornings.

At first I had a reason: I brought my father, so he could see her, and she could see him.