Eight months after losing my wife of forty-three years, I thought I had already met the deepest kind of quiet. At seventy-three, the days moved slowly, stitched together by old habits I couldn’t quite let go of—brewing two cups of coffee though I only needed one, leaving the TV on just to soften the stillness. Ellen used to tell me, “It’s you and me against the world, Harold.” After she passed, the world suddenly felt much bigger, and I felt much smaller inside it.
Everything changed on a bitter Thursday afternoon outside a Walmart.
As I walked out with a bag of groceries I didn’t really need, I noticed a young woman shivering in a thin sweater, clutching a baby wrapped in a worn towel. Her face was pale, her hands trembling. Before I even had time to question myself, I slipped off my winter coat and draped it over her shoulders, guiding her back inside where it was warm.
Her name was Penny. Her baby boy was Lucas.
And both were colder and hungrier than anyone should ever be.
Over a cup of coffee, Penny told me she had left an unsafe home earlier that morning and hadn’t eaten since the day before. She spoke quietly, as if afraid her voice would break. When she finished her soup and tried to give my coat back, I insisted she keep it.
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