He slid a smaller envelope across the table.
“You’re really here to tell me I gained something?”
Noah stared at it like it might disappear.
“My whole life,” he said slowly, “people in suits showed up to move me or tell me I’d lost something.”
He looked at Thomas. “You’re really here to tell me I gained something?”
Thomas smiled faintly. “Yes.”
He left his card, told us to find our own lawyer if we wanted, and let himself out.
For a long time, we didn’t say anything.
The door clicked shut, and the apartment fell quiet.
For a long time, we didn’t say anything.
Our whole lives had been built around the idea that nothing good stayed.
This felt like a glitch in the universe.
“I helped him pick up groceries,” Noah said finally. “That’s it.”
We went to see the house a few weeks later.
“You saw him,” I said.
“Everyone else walked around him. He noticed.”
