The storage unit full of forty years of letters.
The photograph taken outside my old office building on a day I had no memory of, a day I had been laughing at something on my phone while a woman stood on the pavement across the street and chose not to go in.
I thought about what it meant to love someone that carefully.
To want so much and ask for so little.
To place yourself in someone’s path and trust that the rest would happen on its own.
She had been right.
It had.
Patricia knocked gently on the open door.
“How are you doing in here?”
“I’m all right,” I said.
And I meant it.
She came in and sat on the edge of the bed — the way staff did when they were off the clock and just being human for a moment.
“She talked about you, you know.
