It started on a quiet Tuesday in late spring when I noticed my Cuisinart ice cream machine missing from the garage. It wasn’t expensive, but it had sentimental value—my sister gave it to me after my divorce with the words, “If you can’t fix everything, at least you can make ice cream.” I filed a police report, but nothing came of it. Fourteen months later, I came home to find the machine sitting in the garage, clean, running, and humming softly. A neon sticky note on the side read: Thank you. I’m sorry.

Days later, a second note appeared in my mailbox: She died last week. I didn’t know who else to tell. I connected the dots to a tall teenager who had come by selling candy bars—Farid, the corner store clerk, said his name was D’von and he’d been living with his grandmother, Yolanda, on Hadley Street. She’d just passed. I realized D’von must have stolen the machine, maybe to bring her joy, and returned it as she’d asked him to. I left a container of vanilla ice cream on his porch with a note inviting him to talk.

Two weeks later, he knocked on my door. Over bowls of strawberry ice cream, he told me about Yolanda—her gospel music, her puzzles, how fast cancer took her. He admitted taking the machine because she’d missed Dairy Queen and wanted a taste of the past. Before she died, she made him promise to return it. I told him to come by on Tuesdays, and soon we were making everything from mango sorbet to cinnamon-fig gelato. When he found a flyer for a culinary scholarship, we applied together. He got in.

Now, three years later, D’von works at a café and sends me photos of new flavors. Last Christmas, he mailed me a card that read: Thanks for leaving the door open. Twice. Sometimes people take things not from greed, but from grief. And sometimes, if you’re patient, they return with something far more valuable—like trust, friendship, and a recipe book full of a grandmother’s handwriting.