Most of all, I would tell her not to regret the ten dollars.
Last December, on a rainy evening almost exactly twenty-seven years after I met Walter, I drove back to the neighborhood where the old pharmacy had once stood.
The building was gone.
In its place was a family-owned café with wide windows glowing against the wet street.
I went inside and ordered soup.
Before leaving, I handed the owner some money and asked whether she would use it to cover meals for anyone who came in short on cash.
She smiled.
“We can absolutely do that.”
Outside, the rain had softened into a mist, and I stood beneath the café awning for a moment before opening my umbrella.
For most of my life, I had believed generosity worked in a straight line: one person gives, another person receives, and the moment ends.
Walter taught me otherwise.
Kindness moves more like a circle whose edges we may never live long enough to see.
