She herself skipped breakfast more than once.
Victoria remembered it too.
His kindness had not been without cost.
He had been absorbed by a home that was already carrying too much weight.
By spring, Isaiah had already begun to speak more.
He told Victoria his name.
He
He admitted that he wanted to go back to school properly because he liked numbers and because numbers stayed where you put them.
He told her that his mother had said things would get better when he found a stable job.
Victoria told him that the teacher she liked the most was mean to everyone equally, which made her honest.
That was when he laughed for the first time, and she saw what he could be like if life would ever leave him alone.
In April, Colleen got a janitorial job through a cousin in Indianapolis and a church paid for her bus tickets.
Isaiah approached the fence one last time to tell Victoria that he would be leaving the following morning.
He seemed terrified as he said goodbye, as if gratitude had become more dangerous than hunger.
"I won't always be like this," he said.
Victoria tilted her head.
'Like what?'
'Poor.'
It was so shocking to hear a little girl say that she burst out laughing prematurely.
She blushed, but carried on.
"I'll be back," he said.
'I'll come back when I'm rich and I'll marry you.'
Then he laughed even harder, not because he was cruel, but because children often promise impossible things in the same tone that adults reserve for weather reports.
Then, still smiling, she untied the red ribbon from one of her braids, tore it in half with her teeth and hands, tied a piece around her wrist and curled her fingers around it.
—Don't forget it, then—she said.
He didn't.
Twenty-two years later, Isaiah's company, Mitchell Urban Holdings, was valued at forty-seven million dollars.
Business magazines described him as disciplined, visionary, and instinctive.
Her partner, Richard Sloan, considered it impossible.
Employees described him as fair, demanding, and inscrutable.
He had amassed his fortune through remodeling and strategic acquisitions, the kind of work that turned abandoned land into attractive information brochures and old bricks into language understandable to investors.
He had a good eye for predicting the potential of things.
He had less ability to decide what he should become once he had won.
He continued buying properties on the South Side of Chicago long before that made much business sense.
Converted warehouses, abandoned commercial areas, half-dead apartment complexes.
Richard had tolerated it for years because Isaiah's other businesses more than compensated for it.
But after the deal with Thompson was closed for twelve million dollars, Richard entered Isaiah's office after the board meeting, closed the door, and finally said what the entire executive team had been hinting at.
How long are you going to keep doing this to yourself?
Isaiah didn't look up from the stack of documents in front of him.
What was he doing?
"To pretend that those properties are simply properties."
Richard had known him for eleven years, long enough to understand when a conversation took on more importance because Isaiah wanted it to end.
He approached the desk and lowered his voice.
See the rest on the next page.
