The first snow of December fell on a Tuesday, soft and persistent, the kind that transforms a neighborhood overnight into something that looks like a postcard but feels like work. I stood at my kitchen window watching the flakes accumulate on our driveway, calculating how early I’d need to wake up to clear it before my shift at the hospital, when my twelve-year-old son Ben appeared beside me with that particular gleam in his eye that meant he’d been thinking. “Mom,” he said, pressing his face against the cold glass, “Mr.

Dickinson’s driveway is huge.”
I followed his gaze to the house across the street—the one with the circular driveway that could accommodate four cars, the one with the decorative lamppost that probably cost more than my monthly mortgage payment, the one belonging to Richard Dickinson, a man who had a remarkable talent for making sure everyone in the neighborhood knew exactly how successful he was. “It is,” I agreed carefully, wondering where this was going. “I could shovel it,” Ben said, turning to me with the kind of hopeful expression that reminded me so much of his father—earnest, determined, already half-convinced he could do anything if he just tried hard enough.

“I’m strong enough now. I’ve been doing ours, and the Hendersons’ when Mr. Henderson’s back acts up.

I could do Mr. Dickinson’s too.”

My name is Sarah Mitchell, and I’m a single mother of two—Ben, who was twelve and experiencing that particular stage of adolescence where he was desperate to prove himself capable, and Emma, who was eight and still believed the world was fundamentally fair. I worked as a nurse at County General, pulling shifts that paid the bills but left me perpetually exhausted, perpetually calculating whether we could afford pizza for dinner or if it was another pasta night.

Money was tight. Not desperately so—we had a roof, food, heat—but tight enough that Christmas always involved careful planning, strategic shopping, and the kind of creative gift-giving that required more thought than money. Ben knew this, even if I tried to shelter both kids from the weight of it.

He’d started noticing things, the way kids do when they reach a certain age: the way I’d sometimes skip lunch, the way I’d carefully examine price tags at the grocery store, the way I’d smile brightly while saying maybe next year when he asked about the gaming console all his friends had. “That’s very entrepreneurial of you,” I said, using a word I knew would make him feel grown-up. “But you’d need to ask Mr.