to leave him drawings by the supply closet door.
Stick figures, houses with smoke coming out of chimneys, a sun with a smiley face.
Walter kept every single one of them folded in his wallet.
He told himself it was just because kids were sweet.
But the truth, the truth he never said out loud, was that those drawings were the closest thing he had to something that belonged to him.
Something warm.
Something that said, “You exist and somebody sees you.
” That was Walter Briggs at 41.
A man
