Who gave you a second chance when they did not have to?

Most people can name one. A manager who could have let you go and did not. A friend who had every reason to stop answering and kept answering. A parent who found out and dealt with it quietly.

You were in the wrong, or near enough to it. You knew that much. And the thing you were braced for did not come.

It is an odd sort of debt. There is no paying it back to the person who gave it, and most of them would not want it back anyway. The only thing you can really do with it is hand it on to somebody standing where you were standing.

So — who gave you a second chance when they did not have to?