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 opened 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, everyone was thinking about something else.
Cars.
One friend got his aunt’s old Honda.
Another got a pickup.
A girl in my English class got a used convertible and complained that it wasn’t the color she’d wanted.
I took the bus.
It honestly didn’t bother me much.
You get 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 was holding a rectangular wooden box.
It wasn’t perfect.
One corner sat slightly higher than the others, and I could see where he’d sanded down a mistake near the latch.
But the wood was dark and smooth, and my initials were 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 stack of bank statements tied with a piece of string.
My college account.
I looked at him.
“Mom told me about this.”
“Your mother has never successfully kept a secret.”
Then I noticed handwriting on the back of the top statement.
Ray’s.
Boots can wait: $40
I turned to the next.
Brought lunch all week: $25.
Then another.
Truck service next month: $60.
I looked up.
“What is this?”
Ray suddenly looked embarrassed.
“Nothing.”
“You wrote on all of them?”
“I was keeping track.”
“Of what?”
He rubbed the back of his neck.
“I don’t know. Just wanted you to see someday that even when it wasn’t much, we were still getting somewhere.”
I pulled out another statement.
