I adopted my best friend’s son after he abandoned him — years later, the boy invited him to a championship game and gave a speech that made me break down.

And he’d been keeping a folder.

He’d found a bill of sale for a truck I never mentioned and a letter I never mentioned and forty-one messages from a man who wanted a piece of him, and he sat on all of it for eight months, and then he did it in front of four thousand people in one take.

The MVP trophy is on top of my refrigerator, which is where he put it, because he said it looks stupid in his room.

And on the fridge underneath it there’s a photograph from that night that a woman from the local paper sent me.

It’s not of the speech. It’s afterward, on the floor, and I’m still on one knee and he’s got both arms around my head and my hands are still over my face.

You can’t see either of our faces at all.

That’s the one I kept.