Sometimes we drank cocoa. Sometimes tea. Sometimes we just sat at the table reading our own books, sharing the same quiet.
One afternoon, after I admitted that I usually ate lunch alone, she reached across the table and rested her hand over mine.
“Being alone doesn’t mean you’re unlovable,” she said.
I shrugged, staring at the tabletop. “Feels like it does.”
She didn’t argue. She just said, “I used to think that too.”
I noticed things over time. The small wooden box in her living room she never opened. The way she avoided talking about family. The care she took with ordinary things, like folding napkins or straightening the tablecloth.
She said she didn’t have children. No one else.
But she had me.
For a while, she was the reason I believed the world might not be all sharp edges.
Then one day, she was gone.
