Downstairs again. Out again. The church door again. Zoe again, pencil behind her ear now, lists like a song she could sing in her sleep. “Three more, then we do a puzzle,” she informed the circle as if planning rain with the sky.
The last resident we brought out was a man whose jacket still held an old hardware store nametag. He wouldn’t leave without the metal punch he kept in a cigar tin. Luke asked where it was, found the tin under a stack of mail held by a rubber band, and tucked it into the man’s palms without comment.
“Thank you, son,” the man said, voice thinning. “That tool put shoes on three kids.”
Luke opened his mouth and then closed it, the way a strong answer sometimes decides to stay inside because the better one is silence. He nodded instead, once. The man nodded back, as if a trade had been completed.
