PART 1: THE BIKE THAT NEVER CAME
My thirteen-year-old son, Evan, had been dreaming about the same bicycle for months. Every time we drove past the sporting goods store on Route 9, he would glance toward the window at the matte black frame with orange lettering, yet he never once asked me to buy it for him.
That was simply who Evan had become after losing his father three years earlier. Marcus had died suddenly, leaving me with a ten-year-old boy who seemed to grow up almost overnight.
Evan started noticing things children were not supposed to notice. He saw the bills stacked on the kitchen table, the nights I was too tired to cook, and the months when I quietly moved money from one payment to another just to keep everything running.
Somewhere along the way, he decided that his job was to make my life easier rather than add another burden to it. He stopped asking for expensive gifts, handled chores without reminders, and rarely complained when money was tight.
