We didn’t have to solve everything in a single day.
We only had to make the next month possible.
Then the next.
A week later, Ray carried a small folding table to the driveway.
He covered it with a clean cloth and arranged vegetables, jars of preserves, seed packets, and a few loaves of homemade bread on top.
Then he placed a handwritten sign at the front.
TAKE WHAT YOU NEED. LEAVE WHAT YOU CAN.
I watched him from the porch.
“Do you really think people will stop?”
“They’re hungry people, not foolish people,” he replied. “If they need something, they’ll stop.”
For the first hour, nobody came.
Ray continued sorting beans into paper bags as though the empty driveway didn’t bother him.
Then Mrs. Carter appeared at the gate.
She was an elderly widow who lived two houses away. Her pension barely covered her expenses, and she often tried to hide how difficult things had become.
