“You might not think it was a big deal,” she said softly, “but small things keep people afloat.”
Her words settled into me heavier than the December cold had.
I moved toward the door again, but she reached out and touched my arm lightly. Not in a dramatic way. Just steady. Grounded.
“There’s something else,” she said.
I turned.
She walked over to a small shelf near the hallway and picked up a framed photo. Two young men stood shoulder to shoulder, arms slung around each other, grinning at the camera. James looked younger, freer. The other man—his brother, I assumed—had the same smile.
“He doesn’t know I’m telling you this,” she said, handing me the frame. “But his brother used to work in an office too. And he used to say the hardest part of adulthood wasn’t the work—it was feeling invisible.”
She paused, swallowing.
“The week before the accident, he told James that one coworker had started bringing him coffee in the mornings. Just because. He talked about that for days. Said it made him feel like he mattered.”
I stared at the photo, at the echo of James’s face in his brother’s. Something in my chest tightened.
