Leo didn’t understand until he did. The story was the one he’d built from the absence: I’m fine alone. Needing is weakness. People always leave, so leave first. It had been his armor, his anthem, his cage. To take back the boy’s grief meant letting go of the man’s pride.
Leo went home. He called his mother—the one he hadn’t spoken to in three years, not because he was angry, but because he’d forgotten how to need her voice. She answered on the second ring, and when she said, “Leo?” he heard the boy at the station in his own reply. don old
“You’re lost,” she said. Not a question. Leo didn’t understand until he did