I smiled. Then my smile fell apart. I covered my face with my hands and cried.

It wasn’t graceful crying. It was tired. Ancient. The kind of crying that seemed to come from the little girl who once waited for her mother to brush her hair with tenderness, from the teenager who handed over her savings without ever hearing thank you, from the woman who kept accepting crumbs because she had mistaken crumbs for family love.

Nathan didn’t tell me to calm down. He didn’t say, “It’s over now.” He simply held me, as if he understood that some grief doesn’t need an immediate solution.

It only needs a safe place to land.

Later that night, sitting in his kitchen with a bowl of noodle soup and a sandwich Mrs. Miller had made because “nobody thinks clearly on an empty stomach,” my phone began vibrating.

Mom. Dad. Claire. Logan. Aunt Diane. Even a cousin who never remembered my birthday.