Days passed, one after another.
Business at the restaurant picked up.
I took on two helpers, both orphans, the same as Jesse and I had been. A boy and a girl, sixteen and seventeen years old.
I taught them to cook and to keep the books, and told them the restaurant had been left to me by Clara.
"Who's Clara?" the girl asked.
"Someone very good."
"Where is she now?"
"Somewhere far away."
"Is she ever coming back?"
"No. But she taught me one thing before she left."
"What was it?"
"That in this life, you can be poor, you can suffer, but you can never betray your conscience."
The two of them nodded, not quite sure they understood.
I watched them and thought about myself, years ago, just as wide-eyed and lost, the day Clara pulled me in off the street and set a hot bowl of pasta i
