Instead I felt a shame so deep and so sudden that it took my breath, because there was nothing in that old woman’s face but pure, uncomplicated joy at the sight of me.

She was not suspicious.

She was not confused about whether she was glad.

She was simply, wholly happy, the way a person is happy when someone they have been waiting for finally walks through the door, and I stood there in my cheap jacket holding my phone with its little countdown and understood that I had walked into something far larger and far more dangerous to my heart than I had bargained for.

I had steeled myself against a great many things before walking through that door.