Jack feels the sudden weight of grief, thinking of how much he worked. How much he missed. He is realizing just how closely he followed his mother’s example. She held down three jobs to raise him, working morning to night, then working half the night too, day after day. But she never seemed to miss anything. If he needed her, got hurt or sick at school, she was there. Baseball games, graduation, she was there.

“Time, Jack—it’s all we got. It’s how you spend it. I never took it for granted. The holidays. The birthdays. My men. I think about those things. Brings a smile to my face. Waking up every day, knowing I have each of them in my heart, in my actions, in my mind. What I do now, I help others.”

Jack wonders, who has he ever helped? His business created jobs, turned into a huge franchise. He revolutionized pharmacies. Came up with the drive-through, added groceries and one-hour photos. Sold those ideas off and came up with new ones. He donated to other organizations. That was a tax write-off. In the end, it was all about making money. Scratching each other’s back. Doing favors. He never met the people the donations helped. Never knew the faces. The names.

Why? Why is he realizing all this now? After these years. Is it a reckoning?

“It took near twenty-four hours before I learn of their death—of the mine blowing up,” Fabiola tells Jack, who is staring at the floor. The stones have grown slicker, almost molten. The walls continue to heave and sigh. On the wall above the bench, Fabiola’s family has bloodshot eyes. Tears run down their faces and drip onto the bench. Jack’s fat, soft palms are damp. And he closes his eyes. Squeezing them tight to keep them in their sockets.

Seeing the wine open passages within Jack, Fabiola tells him, “My brother-in-law come here to tell me of the explosion. The mine owners, the supervisors, never told nobody nothing. They waited. Racing around to figure out how to handle the situation. Then a radio station picked up on the news.”

Taking another sip of wine, Jack tells Fabiola, “Growing up, during my teenage years, every day after school I washed dishes at a diner in town. My mother worked three jobs. She worked at a bakery in the mornings. Then a diner during lunchtime. It was the same diner I washed dishes for. Then she bartended at night. She always kept all her loose change from the tips she earned in an oversized glass pickle jar at the front door until she filled it up. Then she had it counted at the bank and she’d take us out for supper. ‘My boy,’ she called me. I was her favorite. She’d take us out for hamburgers, french fries, and vanilla floats. That is where my work ethic derived from.”

“And your father—he was absent?”