was trying to take up as little room as possible even in sleep.

I left a granola bar and a note.

Please lock up when you leave.

Caleb’s bus honked outside.

I locked the door behind us and spent the rest of the day regretting every possible version of that decision.

At the diner, I poured coffee with one eye on the clock.

I smiled at customers who snapped their fingers.

I wiped tables.

I counted tips twice and came up short both times.

Every quiet minute, my mind ran back to the apartment.

The coffee tin with the rent cash.

My mother’s thin gold chain in the plastic drawer.

Caleb’s inhaler.

The spare key under the mat because the landlord had never given me a second one.

By the time I picked Caleb up from after-school care, I was exhausted enough to feel hollow.

I had already decided what I would say.

Thank you for leaving quietly.

I hope you find somewhere safe.

I’m sorry, but you can’t come back.

Then I opened the door.

And found him still there.

The first thing I felt was fear.

Not gratitude.

Fear.

That truth still embarrasses me.

“Derek,” I said, keeping Caleb behind me.

“Why are you here?”

He turned the burner down before answering.

On the stove was a pot of stew, not fancy, but real.

Potatoes.

carrots.

onions.

Something hearty enough to make the whole apartment smell like a home I had not had time to create.

“I was going to leave,” he said.

“I swear I was.

But your door wouldn’t latch right after you closed it.”

I looked at the front door.

It sat straight for the first time since we moved in.

Derek nodded toward it.

“The screws were stripped.

Strike plate was loose.

Frame had been patched wrong before.

Anybody could’ve pushed it open.”

My face went hot.

“You went through my apartment?”

“No, ma’am.” He lifted both hands slightly, one still marked with old scars and fresh red lines from work.

“I fixed what was already in front of me.

Then I saw the trash bag leaking by the door, so I took it down.

Then the cabinet under the sink had water pooling under it, and I couldn’t leave that either.”

“You couldn’t leave it?”

He looked at the floor.

“I know how that sounds.”

Caleb slipped around my side.

“You fixed the monster door?”

A small smile crossed Derek’s face and vanished.

“A little.”

I should have relaxed.

Instead, I saw the folded paper on the table.

My landlord’s business card sat beside it, torn cleanly in half.

“What is that?” I asked.

Derek’s expression changed.

The careful politeness disappeared.

Under it was something harder.

Older.

Angrier.

“I found it behind the loose trim by the door,” he said.

“At first I thought it was old trash.”

I stepped closer.

My name was at the top of the page.

Not in my handwriting.

It was a copy of a maintenance complaint I had filed months earlier after Caleb woke up coughing from the damp smell under the sink.

I remembered filling it out in the landlord’s office while Mr.

Voss sighed like I had asked him to rebuild the whole building instead of fix a leak.

At the bottom of the paper,