Stan dried his hands.
"I'll take the guest room," he said. "Good night. Thank you for dinner."
"Sleep," Mrs. Edith answered from the hall. "Goodnight. Have a good sleep, see you in the morning Stan."
With that, he left them to the last of the cups and the lower voices of women closing a kitchen.
The guest room was as he remembered it: spare, kind, a bed that had always been meant for people who belonged almost. He switched on the pale night light. It was low-intensity, a muted amber that barely claimed the corners, enough to find the mattress and not enough to argue with sleep.
He set nothing much aside. Sat. Then lay back. The day's pieces arrived in no particular order—the elevator, a wink across a kitchen threshold, a table with four plates, water on ceramic, Mia's fluster, Sacha's loyalty dressed as jokes.
This house still knew how to hold him without asking him to explain the rest of his life. That was a rare comfort. He let it be one.
