I Always Gave a Few Dollars to a Homeless Man on My Way to Work — on Christmas Eve, He Said, ‘Don’t Go Home Today…There’s Something You Don’t Know!’

A laugh burst out of me and broke halfway.

“That’s him,” I said quietly.

Robert’s face softened.

“He called me when he got sick,” he said. “Told me he’d married a librarian who could ‘out-argue anyone.’”

I swallowed hard.

“Why are you sitting outside my job pretending to be homeless?” I asked.

He looked down at his gloves.

“He asked me to keep an eye on you,” Robert said. “From a distance.

In case something from before you showed up after he was gone.”

“Something like what?” I asked.

Robert reached into his coat and pulled out a thick, creased envelope.

He set it in my lap.

It had my address.

Evan’s full name.

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