I want to tell you I went home that night feeling like I’d done a good thing. And I did do a good thing, I know that. But here’s what I actually did when I got home. I sat down at my kitchen table and I picked up my own phone, and I opened my own call log, and I scrolled.

My boy Danny’s out in Phoenix. Good kid. Got a family, got a job that runs him ragged. Last time Danny called me was February. My birthday. We talked maybe ten minutes and he had to go.

I’m 73 years old. I knock on 23 doors every morning at quarter past six because nobody knocks on mine. I never let myself think it like that before. Ruth made up stories about her kids so she wouldn’t have to feel it, and me, I just walk four miles before the sun’s all the way up so I don’t have to sit in a quiet house and feel it either. We’re the same. We were the same the whole time and I never saw it.

Danny’s number’s right there on the screen. I’ve been looking at it for two days now. I keep telling myself I’ll call him tonight.

I haven’t called him yet.