Now the stranger was gathering information about me. I shouldn’t have been afraid, right? That’s what people did after a car accident—exchanged personal information. But something about him hovering there, sticking his grimy fingers in the gap of my window, shook my bones. I would have given him my bank account number just to get away from this man.

“Whatever is easiest,” I agreed.

“Damage looks minimal. Just a few scratches a good buffering can take care of. You wanna come look?”

Stranger danger! My mother’s deeply ingrained childhood motto reverberated inside me.

“I’m perfectly fine just settling this here. I have”—I pulled out my wallet stuffed with cash Oliver had handed me when he told me to buy more moving boxes and bins and anything I could find to pack stuff in—“$500 cash that should cover your repairs. Would that work?”

Why the heck did I just tell this stranger I had five hundred bucks in cash? Worse, why did I flash the wad? Okay, brace yourself, stupid—he’s going to smash the window and then bash your brains out with a hidden tire iron any second now.

But he didn’t.

“That’s mighty generous of you. I’ll be honest with you ’cause ya seem nice. I don’t have insurance right now. My wife just died—that’s why I wasn’t really paying much mind when I cut you off just now. And I’m raising my kid on my own, and I fell into tough times. I was hoping to avoid the whole insurance thing, if that’s alright by you.”

He wiped a brown tear that rolled down his cheek, streaking his filthy face. Either he was a seasoned scam artist, or he was telling the truth. By the looks of his beater car, clearly he was barely scraping by. I felt terrible for this man who lost his wife and was thrown into single parenthood. I’d never suffered—not really—and I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to lose Oliver.

“You know what? Here’s the $500, and I have an extra $300 I can give you too. It’s all I have, but clearly you need it more than I do. I’m really sorry about your wife.”

“Shit happens.” He looked down at his feet. “Just seems to always happen to me.”

I didn’t know what to say, how to console him through the metal and glass between us. Had it been a friend, I would have offered a hug. But I didn’t trust this stranger enough to step out of my safe haven. I turned my back and fished into the secret compartment of my purse for my emergency money—three hundred bucks—and added it to the five hundred. Eight hundred total—a tidy sum. I handed him the thick stack of bills through the gap in the window.