Something in my chest cracked.
I knelt, gathered the groceries with frozen fingers, and offered her my scarf.
It was thin, barely worth anything, but I gave it anyway. She looked surprised but smiled.
I walked her home, one slow shuffle at a time, across patches of ice and salt.
Shaking and exhausted, she told me she was Charlotte. She was 50 years old and had been walking home from the store when she suddenly felt weak, fell, and tumbled down the slope.
She lived in a small house, the kind you’d miss if you blinked.
Her porch light flickered overhead as if it had its own heartbeat, and the air inside smelled like Vicks, cinnamon, and books that hadn’t been cracked open in a decade.
“Sit,” she said, gesturing to the wobbly kitchen table.
She poured hot cocoa as if it were the most normal thing in the world and slid half a turkey sandwich across the table like she’d made it just for me.
I ate as if I hadn’t eaten all day, because I hadn’t.
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