She glanced at the shopping cart.
“You didn’t even know my name.”
Theo considered that for a moment.
“Do I need to know your name to help you?”
The woman pressed her lips together.
Then she covered her mouth and cried harder.
And that was when the cashier turned away, unable to hold back her tears any longer.
But to understand why that simple question affected everyone in the store, you need to understand something about Theo.
And you need to understand what our lives had been like before that afternoon.
My name is Marcus Bennett, and I was twenty-two years old when this happened.
Theo was fifteen, my younger brother by seven years.
Our mother died when I was seventeen.
It happened suddenly, on an ordinary Tuesday morning, while she was driving home from work. A truck had crossed into her lane during a heavy rainstorm. By the time anyone called us, she was already gone.
