There was a small pile on the bed: a book of matches, a folded shirt. Had he been planning on going away? I didn’t know what I would do if he came back to find me in his room, but I couldn’t resist. I started going through the paintings. There was one of a girl in what looked like a shelter, the kind the state set up during Hurricane Sandy, a Red Cross blanket draped over her shoulders. Another of a jitney driver eating lunch from a Styrofoam container. And one that I loved, of a woman praying in front of the steps of an old church. To her left was a battered rowboat at the center of a plot of earth. The boat was filled with clusters of faded impatiens and held a molded statue of the Virgin Mary in the middle. The details were stunning: from the woman’s wooden rosary beads to the flecks of mold on Mary’s veil.

And then I had to rub my eyes, stare at the floor for a minute, afraid that I would look again and the painting would be a mirage. But there he was, among all the gangsters and the nuns and the bartenders and the go-go dancers, the kids at the schoolyard and the pit bosses and the bodega clerks. My dad, in one of his ratty union shirts, a fingertip-sized hole at the collar. That grin like someone had just whispered a fantastic secret in his ear, his hands wrapped around a paper coffee cup, his hair wild and unbrushed, blown around from driving with the windows of his truck rolled down, even in the cold. I couldn’t help it—I raised my eyes to the ceiling and laughed as I choked down a sob.

I don’t know how long Luis stood in the doorway watching me stare at the painting, feeling as though something precious had been returned to me. I wanted to tell my mother. I wanted to understand how. I turned when the floorboards creaked. Luis raised his eyebrows at me and I held out my hands: I’m sorry, then gestured to the paintings—hoping he would understand my awe, my wonder for what he had made. Wonder. I hadn’t felt it for such a long time.

Luis reached toward the small pile on the bed, moved the shirt aside, setting it down as softly as you might a baby animal, something that could be injured if handled the wrong way. He picked up something that I couldn’t make out, then reached into his pocket. He held his palms out to me like an offering. A folded piece of paper and a two-dollar bill. Like the one my father had given me. Like the one Matthew had nearly destroyed.