Paint.
Glass.
A roof we had repaired far too many times.
The sacred thing was never the property itself.
It was my right to decide what happened inside the life I was still living.
Around nine, someone knocked.
Bradley stood outside holding a paper bag.
“Apple fritters.”
I looked behind him.
No luggage.
No Ashley.
No assumption.
Then he asked,
“Can I come in?”
Four ordinary words.
They nearly broke my heart.
Not because he had learned to ask permission to enter a building.
Because he had remembered that I
