Generosity

An open hand fills faster than a closed fist. That is not a nice sentiment, it is how referrals work.

Kids assume the way to protect a business is to hold on tighter, especially when there is not much to hold. The opposite tends to be true. Helping someone who cannot pay, or handing a job to a competitor who lives closer, comes back in ways that are impossible to predict and easy to trace afterward.

The harder lesson sits underneath it. Enough is its own kind of rich, and Sophie gets there before most adults do.