“Did he ask you to pay it off?” I asked.

“He never asked for one thing,” Irene said.

“He stood at the end of the counter with his chin tucked into his collar and waited for me to slide the cheese tray out from under the counter.”

“Did he know what you’d written down?”

“He watched me make the mark in the book,” Irene said quietly.

“From that day on, he never looked me in the eye going past the register.”

She smoothed the page with her palm, her fingers moving slowly over the faded blue lines.