"I gotta warn you, givin' me baked goods is more than just a kindness," he says. The girl hasn't sought him out and she isn't trying to make an offering, but once something passes between them, it seems like the deed is done. Sweeney doesn't have any control over it, doesn't even know how it works.

Some people don't want that. It used to be he didn't give a shit, because good luck or bad, it was all the same to him. Darrow's softened him a bit. Turned him a little bit back into the king he used to be, the one who cared and loved.

"You offer it to me, I give somethin' in return," he says. "It's just how I'm built. But if the offering stops, so do my return gifts and people sometimes don't like how that goes for 'em."