“My dad didn’t choose you by accident. And it wasn’t for my sake.”

I stared at Georgia.

We were sitting in my uncle Frank’s car in the parking lot of Ridgeview High School. The engine was off. The radio was off too, finally, after changing stations by itself three times on the drive over. Through the windshield, I could see the gym doors propped open, with colored lights and music spilling out.

Georgia had her hand on the door handle. She’d opened her door a crack, but she hadn’t gotten out.

“What does that mean?” I said.

She glanced toward the gym. Then back at me.

“Brent,” she said, “my dad’s been watching you for months.”

My stomach tightened.

“Watching me do what?”

“How you handle problems. How you treat people. Whether you lose your temper.”

I frowned. I could feel sweat starting under the collar of my only suit.

“Wait,” I said. “Did I do something wrong? You’d tell me if I did something to make him upset, right?”

“No,” Georgia said. “That’s the problem.”

Before I could ask what that meant, her phone buzzed in her lap.

She glanced at the screen and groaned.

“It’s Dad.”

She turned the phone around so I could see the message.

Remember our agreement. Don’t make things too easy for him.

I read it twice.

“Georgia,” I said slowly, “what exactly did I agree to?”

She sighed and leaned her head back against the seat.

“Something my father thinks is brilliant,” she said.

I’d started working for Sheldon Pryce when I was nineteen.

His company was called Pryce Supply. We were in a big gray warehouse out by the interstate, between a tire shop and a church that used to be a bowling alley. We supplied restaurants and grocery stores all over the county with food packaging and cleaning products. Takeout boxes, plastic cups, deli paper, napkins, gallon jugs of degreaser, and floor cleaner in drums so heavy it took two people to roll them.

It wasn’t exciting work. Nobody grows up dreaming about restaurant napkins.

But I needed that job more than Sheldon probably realized.

My mom, Denise, was raising my younger sister, Janelle, by herself. My dad left when I was eleven and Janelle was four. He moved to Texas with a woman he met at his gym, and the child support checks came for about two years and then stopped coming.

Mom worked as a receptionist at a dentist’s office. She was good at it. Everyone loved her. The patients brought her cookies at Christmas. But it didn’t pay much, and our apartment wasn’t cheap, and Janelle kept growing out of everything.

So when I got the job at Pryce Supply, I started giving Mom part of every paycheck. For groceries. For the electric bill. For whatever Janelle needed for school. Field trips, a calculator, new sneakers.

Mom hated taking it.

The first time I put cash on the kitchen counter, she pushed it back across to me.

“Brent, no. You’re nineteen. You should be saving for yourself.”

“I am saving.”

“How much?”

“Some,” I said.

She looked at me with her tired eyes.

“Brent.”

“Mom. Janelle’s shoes have a hole in them. I saw it yesterday. Take the money.”

She looked at the money for a long time. Then she picked it up and folded it and put it in the coffee can on top of the fridge, where she kept the bill money.

She didn’t say thank you. She didn’t have to. She just hugged me hard, the way she used to when I was little and had a nightmare.