No one would have thought less of him for saying his goodbyes to a stranger and driving home to sleep before Winnie needed picking up.

He owed this woman nothing.

He had answered a wrong number out of an old reflex of kindness, and the reflex had been honored, and he could go.

But the doctor had said she asked for you to stay, and the word you had landed somewhere in him that the last four years had left raw.

Because he knew what it was to be the person no one stays for.

He had watched it happen to himself in slow motion after Adanna — the friends who came less, the invitations that stopped, the way the world quietly decided his grief had gone on long enough and moved along without him.