He handed me a small paper check.

It was made out to me, from my old restaurant, in the amount of four hundred and twelve dollars.

The exact four hundred I had emptied out of my tip envelope that night, plus interest.

I held it for a long moment.

Six months earlier, that precise number had been a mountain, a catastrophe, the difference between groceries and darkness.

Now it was a small piece of paper, a relic from a life I had left behind.