“About why you do this at all. My parents believe what they want to believe about their anonymous Good Samaritan. It helps them deal with the shit sandwich they’ve been given to eat. They can open up the envelope of money when it shows up, and they can turn to each other and say, ‘See, the world’s not such a bad place.’ But I’m not like that.”

“I’m going to go.”

“You’ll stay. You’ll listen. See, I had to ask myself, my cynical self, why would someone give money to my family this way? If you wanted to help them out, you could just donate to the fund that was set up after the accident. No, whoever is coming in the middle of the night and leaving money is up to something else. And what could that be?” She snapped her fingers. “Guilt. That’s the only explanation. Someone with a lot of guilt. A lot. Now, your friend Aaron, the one who went to prison, he’s done his time. And his life on the outside can’t be that great. He couldn’t just go around like Santa, leaving goodies for a struggling family.” She shook her head, a look of amusement on her face. “And your friend, the other one? The rich guy? What’s his name?”

“Leave my friends out of it.”

“One look at him and you can see he wouldn’t give his money to somebody. He’s a jerk through and through. He looks like the type to have an accident. Not the type to care if anyone got hurt. And not the type to feel guilt.”

“You’re wrong,” I said. “I’m just trying to help. You can’t conclude anything from my gesture.”

“I can’t? Okay. I’ll go to the police and the press and tell them it’s you leaving the money. I’ll tell them there’s something fishy about the accident. You riding in the backseat of your own car. They’ll want to look into that now that the story is back on everybody’s minds. If you want to take the chance that they open it back up, I’ll go do it.”

She turned to go, her movements possessing a military crispness.

“Wait.” Heavy resignation pressed down on me, like bricks piled on my back. “I don’t know what you want.”

She told me the amount. Ten thousand dollars.

And she told me she needed it in one month. Thirty days.

“That’s the deadline. Thirty days. Round up the money or I go to the police and the media and tell them you’ve been leaving the envelopes. From there . . . like I said, they’ll start digging into everything in your life. You’re a pretty well-known guy in this town. It could be embarrassing for that kind of thing to hit the news.”