This isn't charity, and it isn't pity, and it isn't guilt. It's payment, fair and earned, for four years of a job most grown men wouldn't have finished after the first August heat wave. Use it for school. Use it to be the kind of man who keeps noticing people nobody else bothers to. That's the only condition attached to any of it."
Mr. Ferris set the letter down.
Jonah didn't say anything for a long moment. When he finally spoke, his voice came out rougher than I'd heard it in years.
"I didn't do it for this."
"I know," Mr. Ferris said, not unkindly. "He knew that too. That's rather the entire point of the letter."
PART 4
The trouble started three days later, when Preston Whitfield showed up on our doorstep without calling first.
I opened the door to find him standing there in a windbreaker, arms crossed, looking like a man who'd rehearsed something on the drive over and was determined to get through all of it before he lost his nerve.
