She looked away.
“I miss him every day.”
I swallowed.
“Dorothy?”
“Yes?”
“Thank you.”
“I was going to publish the story anyway.”
“You still helped us.”
She nodded.
“This was the moment.”
Then she said something I never forgot.
“You don’t always get to choose when the moment comes. You just have to decide whether you’ll walk away from it.”
I looked at Caleb.
“He was actually going to give up the seats.”
“I heard him.”
“He didn’t want trouble.”
Dorothy nodded.
“That’s what people like that man depend on.”
“What do you mean?”
“They take things because they expect the person losing something to be more uncomfortable with conflict than with the loss.”
I looked toward the field.
“And usually?”
“Usually they’re right.”
The game was about to begin.
Dorothy asked me why Caleb used a wheelchair.
I told her.
A child in the road.
