I had already gone to prison once for stealing money to save Mom. Years later, I stood before a blind man’s open safe and made the same choice again. By morning, every dollar was back, but Mr. Howard knew. Instead of firing me, he handed me an envelope bearing handwriting I knew better than my own.
The safe door stood open across the hall.
I stopped with a stack of towels pressed against my chest and listened to Margaret answering the kitchen phone downstairs.
I had already gone to prison once for stealing money to save Mom.
Inside the safe were documents, velvet boxes, and several bundles of cash held together with paper bands.
Eight feet away, Mr. Howard rested in his usual chair by the sitting-room window.
His face was turned toward the afternoon light.
Inside the safe were several bundles of cash.
At 85, his eyesight had deteriorated so badly that he needed my arm on the stairs and held labels inches from his face.
He could not see what I was looking at.
That was the sentence I used to cross the hallway.
At 85, his eyesight had deteriorated.
I set the towels down, reached into the safe, and slipped one bundle into my pocket.
Then another.
Margaret laughed at something the caller said.
I closed the cash envelope, picked up the towels, and walked away before she returned.
I slipped one bundle into my pocket.
I’d stolen $8,000 in less than a minute.
It was not the first time I’d told myself theft was an act of love.
Three years earlier, my mother had begun cancer treatment while I worked nights at a shipping warehouse.
I’d stolen $8,000.
Insurance covered part of her care, but every appointment seemed to produce another bill.
I borrowed what I could, missed rent twice, and eventually took money from a deposit bag at work.
I meant to replace it.
Insurance covered part of her care.
The company discovered the shortage first.
I turned myself in and spent 18 months in prison.
During every visit, Mom made me promise I would never sacrifice my life to prolong hers.
After my release, nobody wanted the man my background check described.
I turned myself in.
Then I saw a handwritten advertisement taped inside a bus shelter.
LIVE-IN CAREGIVER NEEDED. $5,000 MONTHLY.
The address led to a mansion behind iron gates.
My shoes were worn at the heels, and the collar of my borrowed shirt kept curling upward.
LIVE-IN CAREGIVER NEEDED. $5,000 MONTHLY.
I nearly left before a gray-haired woman opened the door.
Her eyes dropped to my shoes, then returned to my face.
“I’m Margaret. You must be Kevin.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
A gray-haired woman opened the door.
“Don’t call me ma’am. It makes me feel like a school principal.”
She led me into a wide hallway that smelled faintly of furniture polish.
“Mr. Howard is a retired Marine,” she explained. “Mean as a rattlesnake and twice as stubborn. Four caregivers have quit.”
“Don’t call me ma’am.”
I stopped beside the staircase.
If she learned the truth after hiring me, it would feel like another lie.
“I’ve been to prison,” I said.
Margaret turned around.
“For what?”
“Stealing.”
“I’ve been to prison.”
She studied me long enough that I began planning my walk back to the bus stop.
“Well, we don’t need another polished boy from an agency,” she finally said. “Maybe you’ll last longer than the others.”
Mr. Howard sat near a window with a cane across his knees.
She studied me.
He wore a pressed white shirt and an expression that suggested my existence had inconvenienced him.
“Who’s that?”
“Kevin, the applicant.”
“Sounds nervous.”
“I am, sir,” I said.
My existence had inconvenienced him.
“At least he’s honest about something. Can he make coffee?”
I could.
Apparently, I could not place it correctly.
Mr. Howard reached for the cup before I moved the tray near enough, knocking coffee over my pants.
“You call that coffee, boy?”
“Can he make coffee?”
