She let silence be its own kind of comfort.
Charlotte taught me how to sew a button and how to fold sheets so they felt crisp.
She also taught me to write thank-you notes with honesty.
Once, when I showed up in the middle of a snowstorm without a coat, she draped one of hers over my shoulders. She’d altered it to fit me!
“I know you don’t want charity,” she said, tugging it tighter around me. “So let’s call this what it is: community.”
No one had ever spoken to me like that, like I wasn’t broken.
For a while, she was the reason I believed the world might not be all sharp edges.
Then, just like that, she was gone!
One week she was there; the next, the porch was dark.
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