It was a chemistry lesson in a plastic bottle.

"I know, Dad," Elias said. He felt a sudden, irrational anger toward the bottle. It was an agent of destruction. It was the reason his pancreas was screaming for help. It represented every lazy morning, every "just one more biscuit," every denial of his own mortality.

Then came the caddy. The small, revolving wooden tray that held the packets of sugar, the pink and yellow sachets, and the star of the show: the bottle.

He picked up the bottle. He turned it over. He’d never really looked at the back before. He was surprised to find a nutrition label at all; for years, he had assumed it was just some magical elixir cooked up in a backroom.

For Henry, the syrup wasn't about High Fructose Corn Syrup or Glycemic Index . It was about continuity. It was about the sweetness of a life that had often been bitter and hard. Henry had worked forty years in a furniture factory, breathing sawdust and lifting heavy loads, all so Elias could sit in this booth and worry about his blood work.