That morning, the school posted a message thanking an anonymous mother and her two children for cleaning and rolling 87,200 pennies to pay off an entire second-grade class’s lunch debt. They never mentioned Curtis or explained where the coins came from. They didn’t need to. Merrill was a small town, and by lunchtime, nearly everyone knew.

Curtis didn’t contact me that day. But at 7:25 the following morning, Mrs. Lundquist called. Her voice sounded unusually serious. She told me Curtis Wendt was standing in her office and wanted to speak with me. I dropped Eli at his classroom, left Rosie with the secretary, and hurried down the hallway.

Curtis stood in the tiny office wearing his familiar grease-stained jacket. He had shaved, but his eyes were red. He held his baseball cap in both hands. Mrs. Lundquist sat behind her desk. After a long silence, Curtis placed a folded check on the desk. It was for $6,400, enough to pay off the lunch debt for the rest of the school. Then he asked me to post on Facebook that he had donated it, apologized, and made things right. He wanted the town to know.