I froze.
“She didn’t trust people,” he added, “but she trusted you.”
I didn’t know whether to cry or whisper an apology into the empty room.
Suddenly, all her little habits came back to me—the way she paused in the hallway like she wanted to speak but didn’t, the quiet ache in her eyes when she watched children play, the way she walked alone to the store and returned with just the basics.
Her silence had always seemed cold. Now it felt like sorrow.
And then I saw it: an envelope, tucked in the box, my name written in soft, looping script. No long letter. No dramatic confession. Just ten words:
“You made life less lonely. Thank you.”
Ten words that broke something open in me.
Her apartment wasn’t filled with loneliness. It was filled with the quiet love she had never shown openly, the gratitude she had kept hidden, memories preserved silently.
All those years, I thought she ignored me. But I had been her lifeline. The thread she held onto in a world that had let her down.
