the school's neighborhood history week, and she had drawn a picture of an old redbrick workshop beneath the title, THINGS THAT START SMALL. Daniel recognized the workshop immediately. He had worked in that building when its windows rattled, its heating failed each winter, and the company occupying it barely had enough money to pay the electricity bill. The drawing was based on a photograph she had found in an old album.
"Is that where you were a boss?" Lily asked as he poured milk into her cereal. Daniel nearly laughed into the carton. "I was never a boss, sweetheart. I was just the person who knew how to keep the lights on."
She pointed at the tiny figure beside the workshop door, a young man in overalls holding a wrench. "But that's you. And the other man is Mr. Grant, right? The one in the picture with Grandpa's old-looking car."
"That's Elliot Grant," Daniel told her. "He started the company before it had a real office or a fancy name." Lily studied the drawing, considering how a business with glass walls and hundreds of employees could once have fitted inside a building smaller than her school gym.
"Did he like you?" she asked. Daniel thought about the nights he and Elliot had eaten cold sandwiches on overturned packing crates, laughing because the air conditioner had broken for the third time. "He trusted me," Daniel said finally. "That's a little different, and sometimes it's better."
He did not explain that Elliot Grant had been the person who kept Daniel employed when financial trouble should have closed the company. He did not mention the money he had lent Elliot for replacement parts or the nights he had driven across town to keep a prototype alive for a demonstration the next morning. Those facts had never seemed suitable for