He was still chuckling to himself. He put his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “A couple of months before Jesse died, I was over at his house talking about his design for the building, and he said, ‘Watch for this white girl to show up at the gallery. She’s gonna need a boatload of help.’ Though he didn’t say ‘boatload.’”

“Oh my God…” Oliver’s words suddenly made this whole crazy experience feel real. “Do you have any idea how he decided on me?”

He shrugged. “I don’t even know how he decided to help me.”

“Help you?”

He nodded. “I was one of his charity cases,” he said. “Thirteen years ago, now.”

“You’re kidding!” I took a step back to really look at him. “What did he do for you?”

Oliver smiled. “I was seventeen, living in Philadelphia, and about to drop out of the stifling private school my parents had me in—”

“Wait. Private school? Charity case?”

“There are different types of charity.”

“Okay.” I could understand that. “Continue.”

“I’d gotten my girlfriend pregnant, and thought I should get a job and support her and my soon-to-be kid—”

“Whoa,” I said. Maybe not gay, after all. “You are so not at all what I imagined you to be.”

“What did you imagine?”

“Just not … the type to get a girl pregnant at seventeen.”

“Yeah, well … Don’t judge a book, and all that.” He smiled again. “So one day I get this phone call from Jesse Jameson Williams, a guy I’d never heard of. He told me I had promise and he wanted to help me.”

“He called you personally?” I wished I’d had the chance to talk to him myself. How incredible that would have been.

“Uh-huh,” Oliver said. “Jesse somehow got me out of my hellhole of a school and into the University of the Arts in Philly. He paid for everything. He even paid child support for my son, including child care, so my girlfriend could stay in school.” Oliver’s voice thickened and he turned his gaze away from me. Drew in a breath. “Really, he saved me,” he said. “I was going down the drain.”

“How did he even know about you?”

“He’d never tell me.” Oliver cleared his voice, seeming to get his emotions back under control. “I don’t think he ever told the kids he helped. But I’m pretty sure my art teacher got in touch with him. That was just the way Jesse was. He had a lot of money and he liked to spend it on people he thought were worth saving.”

“I’m not sure anyone would think I’m worth saving right now,” I said, the words out of my mouth before I could stop them.

Oliver nodded. “Exactly how I felt back then,” he said, without prodding me for an explanation.

“So, did you marry your girlfriend?” I asked.