I started bringing him little snacks from the vending machine in the lobby. Cheese crackers, apple juice, those little packages of chocolate chip cookies.

It cost me about four dollars a day, but I didn’t care one bit.

My pension is small, but I could afford that much to see him smile.

He was always so polite. “Thank you, Miss Martha,” he would say. But he still wouldn’t open a book.

One evening in February, we had a terrible ice storm. The roads were treacherous, and the library director decided we had to close early at 5:30.

I walked over to Leo’s corner to tell him the news. I remember the radiator was clicking in the wall, and the room was freezing.

“We have to close up early tonight, Leo,” I said, kneeling down by his chair. “Do you have a phone number for your mom? I can call her to come get you.”

A look of pure panic came over his little face. He grabbed the arms of the green chair so hard his knuckles turned white.

“No, please,” he said. “I can’t go home yet.”

“It’s freezing outside, sweetie,” I said. “You can’t walk home in this ice. Why can’t you go home?”

He looked down at his shoes. “If I go home before seven, the lock is still on.”

I felt a strange chill go down my back. “What lock, Leo?”

“The one on the outside of my bedroom door,” he said. He was trying so hard not to cry.

“Mom’s boyfriend puts it on when he leaves for his shift,” he said. “He doesn’t take it off until seven when he gets back.”

I just stood there because my brain kind of stopped working for a second.

A nine-year-old boy, locked in a room from the outside for hours every day.

“Does your mom know?” I asked, my voice shaking.

“She says it’s for my own good,” Leo whispered. “She says it keeps me safe.”

That night, I took him to the diner across the street and bought him a warm plate of chicken tenders. We sat in a vinyl booth until the clock on the wall hit 7:00 PM.

After I watched him walk safely inside his house, I went home and found a blue spiral notebook in my kitchen drawer.

I started keeping a log. Every single day Leo came in, I wrote down the date and the time.

I wrote down the snacks I bought him, and most importantly, I wrote down every little thing he told me during our quiet talks.