I paid him anyway, in the way Franny would have, which was sideways — a “wage” that was really just his family’s groceries mended into the arrangement, his college applications read over by Lottie who had been an English teacher, a reference letter from me on the shop’s letterhead that I think mattered to him more than the button ever had.

He wanted to be an engineer.

He was going to be a good one.

What I could give him was small, and I knew it, and I gave it anyway, because I had learned from a basket of notes that small is not the same as nothing.

I could not pay his tuition or open doors at universities.

But I could teach a boy that his hands were worth something, which is a thing a certain kind of boy does not otherwise get told.

I could give him a warm room to do his homework in on the nights the grocery was busy and the apartment above it was loud with little siblings.