“Come and sit in here.” He picked up a tray with mugs of hot tea and carried it to the living room in front of the fire. “Charlie’s thriving,” he said.

“Working out is the best idea anyone has suggested.”

“It’s more than his workouts. I think he likes it here. He likes his school.”

“He likes his friends, and not just his fellow students. Friends he’s made through my job working for Winnie have been perfect for him, and of course that includes you.”

“I got a kick out of him the first day I met him.”

“Did you see him as an underprivileged kid?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Not at all. He was a brilliant kid with a laptop.”

“But then you saw our trailer park and the mess we were in...”

He shook his head again. “It wasn’t that bad, Lin Su. I hope this doesn’t sound condescending but it wasn’t anything to feel ashamed of. You could’ve run into those problems in an upper-class neighborhood—break-ins, bullying, drug abuse, et cetera. The last place I lived, I rented a town house. Nice place, gated community. A lot of the kids drove late-model sports cars or flashy trucks to school. Cortega High School—the local police called it Cocaine High. The kids were overindulged, spoiled, disrespectful vandals. You can only solve so many problems with money.”

“I put too much importance on money sometimes,” she said. “I could have afforded something a little better, but...”

He reached for her hand and held it. “It was sturdy, warm, had hot water, a working stove and a door that locked. Not a bad little place, just some bad neighbors. A lot of people would be grateful for that little trailer.”

“You?”

“Oh, I would’ve been thrilled with it when I was a kid. My mother and I were in so many rotten flats, shared apartments, tenements... We moved all the time. We even spent time in shelters.”

“Where is your mother now?” she asked.

“Died when I was sixteen.”

“Can you talk about her?” she asked.

“She’s not easy to understand,” he said.

“Neither is my mother. Either of my mothers. Tell me about yours?”

He sipped some of his tea as he thought. “She was so pretty. I sometimes wonder if she really was or if that was a little boy’s image. She was pale and blonde and small. When I was little, under five, she was looking for the right man and went through a bunch of ’em. And then she found something that was more satisfying to her than a man. Drugs. She worked as a waitress in an all-night diner but that wasn’t enough money to keep us as long as she had a habit so she also cleaned office buildings when she could get the work. I’m not sure when the habit started—seemed like we lived with it forever. And I don’t know if you’ll understand this because I don’t understand it—she was an irresponsible mother but she was also devoted. She was whacked-out half the time but I never doubted she loved me. She adored me. She cried a lot because she was such a bad mother.

“By the time I was seven or eight, I was running in the streets. Half the time I got meals at neighbors’ houses or scrounged. I didn’t go to school regularly, I didn’t have discipline or a curfew or boundaries and I’m pretty sure my mother was dealing out of that diner. She might’ve been selling herself, too, but not around me. Social services took custody of me twice and she worked hard to clean up and get me back both times. But when I was thirteen she’d played all her cards. They took me to foster care again and she was too far gone to make it back. I took the bus to see her on the other side of town a few times, to bring her a can of soup or a sweater, and I saw I was losing her day by day. And a couple of years later she was dead. They said it was an overdose but it was more than that—her body must’ve given out. She was on a downward spiral my whole life.”

“Your father?” she asked hesitantly.

“Never knew one, never heard a name.”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Thanks, but please don’t feel sorry for me. It was a rough, poor neighborhood and I wasn’t the only kid with those kinds of problems. I was one of the few to get out, however. And it was a genuine miracle. I was in a good foster home and went to a decent school, and even though I was pure trouble, they worked with me, caught me up on the lessons, took extra time with me, introduced me to track. I could’ve been placed in any other home and gone all the way down to the place my mother lived and died, but I got a second chance because someone gambled on me. I was too mean to care and too angry to appreciate the chance and I fought back hard, but they hung in there with me. I was lucky. Plus, I might’ve been poor and neglected, but I wasn’t unloved or abused or molested, so I had a fighting chance. My foster mother suggested I had a chance to make my mother proud of me. She also made sure I was in counseling with a group of kids more like me. Worked like a charm.”

“Is this a story you’ve told a lot?” she asked.

“It’s a story I’m used to now.”

“You tell it in your speeches?” she asked.

“About my life, yes. About my mother? Not too much. Telling it to myself was the hard part. I think it was ten years ago or so that I had to figure out what was driving me, what was scaring me and costing me sleep, what extra weight I was carrying. And I didn’t do that because I’m sensitive or insightful. I did it because I was angry, screwed up, wanted to win races, and it was like I was just ten pounds too heavy. I got into yoga, started reading more about spiritual freedom, started listening to...” He stopped and laughed. “TED Talks. Not exactly, but stuff like that. As an experiment I just blurted out the unvarnished truth about myself, my roots, and no one died.”

He reached for her hand and held it.

“No, I don’t talk about her a lot. Only when it’s appropriate. It’s heavy. I assume you really wanted to know.”

She nodded.

“I hope your experience was a lot easier.”

She nodded, but she pulled back her hand. Of course her experience was easier! “I was adopted by a white American family. Irish Catholic, as a matter of fact. They were well-to-do. I went to private schools, traveled a lot with my family and classmates. I lived a pretty charmed life.”

“Something happened somewhere along the way,” he said.