When I was close to failing chemistry, he stayed beside me at the kitchen table until nearly midnight, despite understanding the periodic table even less than I did.
At one point I said, “You’re literally making this worse.”
“Probably.”
“Then why are you still here?”
“Because parents don’t get to quit before their kids do.”
Parents.
He didn’t appear to realize what he’d just called himself.
I did.
A few months later, Mom married him.
That fall, she told me something I wasn’t supposed to know.
She and Ray had started a college account for me.
“We can’t put much in,” she said. “Don’t get excited.”
“How much?”
“Whatever’s left.”
Some months, that meant almost nothing.
Ray had Danny and Cara to provide for, too.
So I tried not to think about the account.
At school, everybody was focused on something else.
Cars.
One friend received his aunt’s old Honda.
Another got a pickup.
A girl in my English class got a used convertible and complained because it wasn’t the color she wanted.
I took the bus.
It honestly didn’t bother me much.
You become good at not wanting things when you know exactly what they cost.
On the morning I turned 17, Ray knocked on my bedroom door at seven.
“You’re up.”
“You woke me.”
“Same thing.”
He carried a rectangular wooden box.
It wasn’t flawless.
One corner was slightly higher than the others, and I could tell he’d sanded away a mistake near the latch.
Still, the wood was dark and smooth, with my initials burned into the lid.
“J.M.”
“You made this?”
“In the garage.”
“That’s what you’ve been doing out there?”
“For about six weeks.”
I opened it.
Inside was a pile of bank statements tied together with string.
My college account.
I looked at him.
