He knew the specific loneliness of being a burden, of being the sad thing people are relieved to leave.

And here was a woman experiencing the same abandonment in fast-forward, watching everyone she loved treat her like a memory while she was still breathing, reduced to begging a wrong number not to hang up.

He could not be one more person who left her.

Not because he owed her, but because he knew, from the inside, exactly what leaving would do — and he had promised himself, somewhere in his own grief, that if he ever again had the chance to be the one who stayed, he would take it.

So he went back inside.

“Why are you here?” Ifeoma asked, watching him retake the chair.