kitchen table until almost midnight.
“You realize you’re making this harder, right?” I joked.
“Probably.”
“Then why are you still helping?”
He shrugged.
“Parents don’t quit before their kids do.”
He said *parents* without even noticing.
I noticed.
A few months later, he married Mom.
Not long afterward, they opened a college savings account for me.
There wasn’t much money to spare.
Some months they could contribute a little.
Other months almost nothing.
Ray had his own children to support, household bills to help with, and plenty of expenses of his own.
So I never thought much about the account.
Until the morning of my seventeenth birthday.
Ray knocked on my bedroom door carrying a handmade wooden box.
It wasn’t perfect.
One corner was slightly uneven, and I could see where he had corrected a mistake near the latch.
But my initials were burned carefully into the top.
“J.M.”
