Across the room, Sophie squealed.
She was spinning.
The dress flared around her.
Caleb started spinning too.
Then Marcus.
Then two other kids.
Soon half the children in the room were turning in ridiculous circles until one fell over and everybody laughed.
Walter laughed so hard he had to wipe his eyes.
And for one perfect moment, I understood how strange the chain had been.
A little red dress in a store window.
A seven-year-old boy with forty-six dollars.
A mother too proud to ask for help.
A grandmother who said the wrong thing.
A photograph posted online.
Fifty-three lunchboxes.
A frightened child.
Twenty-four thousand eight hundred dollars in a battered metal box.
A grieving father remembering a little girl from 1984.
None of those things seemed powerful enough on their own to change much.
But kindness rarely announces what it is going to become.
It just moves.
From one person to another.
