On the third day, Ethan appeared at my kitchen door.

He looked terrible.

His face was gray.

His eyes were sunken and hollow, ringed dark, the eyes of a man who had not slept in days.

He stood on my step with his shoulders bent, and there was something in the way he held himself that I can only describe as the posture of a man walking toward his own execution — not defiant, not defensive, but emptied out, resigned, come to receive a sentence he believed he had earned.

I did not care how he looked.