cigarettes as wordless amends
He knew she smoked like a chimney and had given up cigarettes for weeks to save up for something
Context
Two wordless amends bracketing the memory, both counted in cigarettes: the chain-smoking old woman who gave up smoking for weeks to afford a birthday cake nobody would eat, and the boy who slipped stolen packs into her mailbox afterward, unable to say anything. The gesture the program will later formalize as making amends is already here in its rawest form — restitution attempted in the only currency available, arriving too late and unacknowledged.