My father's restaurant ledger, found 30 years later

Cleaning out the storage room of our taqueria last month, I found my father's ledger from 1995, the year he opened. The losses are written in pencil — light, erasable, as if he couldn't bear to make them permanent. The good days are in ink. On the page for December 24th he wrote, in Spanish, 'Today twelve strangers ate for free. A man should not be hungry on Nochebuena.' He never told us. He died thinking the restaurant was his small, ordinary life. I am writing this so my children know it was not ordinary at all.