For years, he never thought of himself as a hero. He was just the neighbor who couldn’t walk past hunger without doing something about it. While others crossed the street, he crossed the small distance between his front door and the curb, carrying bowls that steamed in winter air. Sometimes they talked about nothing. Sometimes they didn’t talk at all. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that, in those moments, she wasn’t invisible.

When the county called, asking him to collect her belongings, he expected almost nothing. Instead, he found a box with a folded dress, a worn photograph, and the letter with his name. In shaky lines, she wrote that his visits had kept her alive long after she’d given up on being worth the trouble. She left him no fortune, only the unbearable gift of knowing he had been someone’s reason to stay.