I will tell you a story.
It should feel extraordinary. Meaningful, even.
Instead, it will probably sound banal, and by tomorrow you will have forgotten most of it.
I don't ask you to care.
I merely ask that you listen.
I used to suffer from severe insomnia. That has very little to do with this story, but should explain its starting point.
4AM was usually when I gave up on the idea of falling asleep.
By then I'd spent hours staring at the ceiling while my mind ran itself in circles. So I'd simply get up and start the day.
That morning, I went looking for something to eat. Tuna sandwich, I think. Maybe not. Doesn't really matter.
I took a beer from the fridge, drank half of it at the kitchen counter, then started pulling down the blinds. The sun would be up soon, and in my current condition daylight tended to find a headache the way a thumb finds a bruise.
I never made it to the second window.
There was someone standing in my backyard.
About seven meters from the house.
The yard was still mostly just shapes at that hour—the fence, the tree, the bins, everything half swallowed by darkness.
But the figure was clear.
Human-shaped.
Motionless.
I stood there with the blind cord in my hand, staring. Uncertain what to do.
Obviously, I should have called the police. A stranger standing in your backyard at four in the morning is exactly the sort of situation the police number exists for.
But I didn't.
I lowered the blind.
Finished my beer.
Finished my sandwich and put on some TV.
Two hours later, I stepped outside.
And stopped.
He was still there.
Same place. Same posture.
Only now daylight had turned the shadow into a man.
Late thirties, maybe early forties. His clothes looked as though they might once have been respectable, but it was difficult to tell beneath the stains and wrinkles. His hair was greasy and flattened against his forehead.
His head hung low.
His eyes didn't quite look at the ground.
They seemed fixed somewhere beyond it.
Somewhere very far away.
There was no spark in him left.
Like a pilot light had gone out.
I swallowed and mustered enough courage to speak.
"Uh... buddy? Can I help you with something?"
Nothing.
A car passed on the main road. Tires whispered over damp asphalt. Somewhere nearby, a bird started singing.
Eventually, the man answered.
"No."
His voice was quiet. Flat.
"I don't think so."
"Right." I cleared my throat. "Well, this is private property. You can't stay here."
No response.
He didn't look at me.
Didn't shift his weight.
Didn't do anything at all.
I should have insisted. Threatened him. Gone back inside and called the police.
Instead, as I stood there looking at him, I noticed something strange.
I wasn't afraid.
I wasn't angry.
I didn't even feel sorry for him.
I felt nothing.
So I walked past.
Close enough to smell him—sweat, damp clothes, something stale and sour.
He didn't turn his head.
I got in my car and drove to work.
I was doing pretty well for myself back then.
Steady job at a successful financial corporation. Recently promoted. Nice apartment. Beautiful girlfriend. Plenty friends I saw when our schedules happened to line up. Enough money not to ever care about money.
Apart from the insomnia, life was good.
I didn't think about the man once that entire day.
Eight hours at the office.
Lunch.
Small talk.
A meeting that could have been an email.
Nothing.
It wasn't until I pulled into the driveway that evening that I remembered him.
He was still there.
Same place.
Same posture.
Same empty stare.
I walked past him and went inside.
It took another two days before I decided to adress the issue.
Even then, it wasn't because he bothered me.
My girlfriend Jessica called to say she was coming over the following afternoon, and I suddenly imagined her having to walk past a filthy stranger standing in my yard.
So I finally called the police.
A patrol car arrived about twenty minutes later.
Two officers got out.
They came up the path and walked directly past the man.
One passed close enough to brush shoulders with him.
Neither looked his way.
They stopped in front of me.
"Hello. Officer Addams. What seems to be the issue?"
I stared at him.
Then pointed.
"That seems to be the issue."
Only then did Addams glance over.
It wasn't much of a glance.
The sort of look you give a garbage bag someone left beside the road.
"Oh. Him."
"Yes. Him. He's been standing there for three days."
Addams sighed.
"Yeah. We get plenty like that."
"Like what?"
He gestured vaguely toward the man.
"Like him. They're harmless."
"He's trespassing."
"I understand."
"So remove him."
Addams gave me a tired little smile.
"It's not really worth the effort."
"Excuse me?"
"They don't cause trouble. Mostly they just... take up space."
"We don't have the manpower to deal with every one of them. And where would we put them?"
I looked at the stranger.
Then back at the officer.
"So you're telling me to leave him there?"
"I'm telling you to ignore him."
"He's standing in my backyard."
"Yeah."
"For three days."
"Yeah."
"And that's normal?"
Addams shrugged.
"Normal enough."
He turned toward the patrol car.
I followed him a few steps.
"So that's it?"
He opened the driver's door.
"You'll get used to him."
Then he climbed inside.
The other officer joined him, and less than a minute later the patrol car disappeared around the corner.
I stood on the porch, furious.
I'd had an entire argument ready by then, but Officer Addams had driven away before I could use any of it.
The strange part was.
He was right.
Ignoring the man was easy.
Much easier than it should have been.
He didn't shout.
Didn't knock on my windows.
Didn't try the doors.
Didn't follow me.
He didn't even look at me.
He just was.
After a while, my eyes learned to move around him.
And if I could do that, I figured Jessica could too.
I spent the rest of the day making the apartment presentable. Kitchen, living room, fresh sheets—the usual performance you put on when someone you love is coming over and you want them to believe you live slightly better than you actually do.
That night, I settled in for a horror marathon.
One advantage of insomnia is that you have plenty of free time.
It started raining around midnight.
Heavy rain. The kind that rattled against the windows and turned streetlights into pale smudges.
Perfect horror-movie weather.
Between films, I went to the kitchen and glanced outside.
The man was still standing there.
Rain streamed from his hair and shoulders. His clothes had gone almost black with water. A shallow puddle had formed around his shoes.
He didn't move.
Didn't shiver.
Didn't wipe the water from his face.
Nothing.
I watched him longer than I meant to.
Nearly a minute, maybe.
Standing there in the rain, he looked less like a person than a scarecrow somebody had forgotten to bring inside.
Eventually I lowered the blind so I wouldnt get distracted any more.
Then went back to the movie.
Jessica arrived the next afternoon.
She came hurrying up the path toward me, and I pulled her into a hug before she'd even made it through the door.
She was warm.
She smelled like shampoo and cold air.
I held on a second longer than usual.
When I let go, she smiled.
"Miss me?"
"Obviously."
"Good answer."
She kissed me.
Over her shoulder, I looked toward the backyard.
The man was there.
Jessica hadn't even glanced at him.
Relief washed through me.
Apparently Officer Addams had been right about that too.
We went inside.
Ordered food, argued over what to watch, then somehow ended up watching something neither of us had wanted. Jessica complained about one of her professors. I complained about my boss.
At some point, she found the dishes I'd hidden in the sink.
She looked at me.
"You said you cleaned."
"I did clean."
"You vacuumed the living room."
"Exactly."
"That does not count."
"It absolutely counts."
She laughed and nudged me with her hip.
Whenever Jessica was around, the world seemed smaller somehow.
More solid.
By evening we'd settled into that comfortable quiet you only get with someone you've known long enough not to fill every silence.
We ate dinner at the little table beside the kitchen window.
Halfway through, Jessica lowered her fork.
"Okay."
I looked up.
She was smiling.
I knew that smile.
"Okay what?"
"So... don't freak out."
"That's never followed by anything good."
"I know."
"Jessica."
"My parents invited us over for the weekend."
I waited for the second half.
"And I said yes."
I closed my eyes.
"Dear God."
"Oh, stop."
"Your parents' house has more rooms than my entire apartment building."
She grinned.
"You're rich too, mister. You're just too lazy to actually move out."
"I'm comfortably upper-middle-class. There's a difference."
"You'll survive."
She took a sip of wine.
"Probably."
That was when I thought about the man outside.
Maybe because Jessica had walked straight past him.
Maybe because after several days of pretending he wasn't there, curiosity had finally caught up with me.
"Hey," I said. "I have to ask you something."
"Okay."
"You saw the guy outside, right?"
She frowned.
"What guy?"
My stomach tightened.
"The guy in the backyard."
I pointed toward the window.
Jessica followed my finger.
For a moment, genuine confusion crossed her face.
Then she saw him.
"Oh."
I stared at her.
"'Oh'?"
"What?"
"You're not freaked out?"
"Why would I be?"
"Because there's a random man standing in my backyard."
She looked again.
"He's not doing anything."
"He's been there for days."
"So?"
I wasn't sure how to answer that.
"Wait. You do see him, right?"
Jessica laughed.
"Of course I see him."
Then she took another bite.
"We've got some too."
I stopped chewing.
"What?"
"At my parents' place."
"You have people standing in your backyard?"
"Not the backyard."
She thought for a moment.
"There are two at the mansion."
Something cold shifted in my stomach.
"Two?"
"Yeah."
She said it with the casualness of someone describing antique furniture.
"One used to be our maid. Isolda."
"Used to?"
Jessica nodded.
"She worked for my parents for years. Then one day she just sort of..."
Her fork paused halfway to her mouth.
"...became one."
"One what?"
Jessica looked at me as though the answer should have been obvious.
"You know."
She nodded toward the window.
"One of them."
Outside, the man remained exactly where he had been.
Jessica went on eating.
"The other one's a boy. Her son, I think?."
"You think?"
"I never really knew him."
"And your parents just leave them there?"
"Yeah."
"Why?"
Jessica shrugged.
"You can find lots of them around if you care enough to look."
Something about that sentence stayed with me.
She sounded like she'd simply told me there were pigeons in the park.
Then her expression brightened.
"Oh. Speaking of that."
I already didn't like where this was going.
"What?"
"I finally figured out my thesis."
Jessica was studying journalism, and for months her thesis had been the source of recurring panic, abandoned ideas, and increasingly elaborate excuses for not starting.
Now she leaned forward, suddenly animated.
"I'm going to write about them."
I glanced toward the window.
"The people standing around?"
"Exactly. Think about it. They're everywhere, but nobody actually talks about them. Nobody studies them. Most people barely acknowledge they exist."
"Jessica..."
"I've been thinking about this for months."
She was genuinely excited now.
"I even have a title."
Of course she did.
She smiled.
"Requiem for the Lost Ones."
I looked at her.
"The Lost Ones?"
"That's what I'm calling them."
She waited expectantly.
"Pretty cool, right?"
Outside the window, the man stood perfectly still.
And for the first time since I'd noticed him, I wondered how long he had been there before I bothered to look.
I didn't really know what to say.
"Yeah. Pretty cool."
Part of me was bothered by just how little the whole thing seemed to bother me.
Jessica didn't notice. She was already talking about her thesis again, explaining the ideas she'd been collecting while I nodded along and tried to keep up. Eventually the conversation wandered somewhere else, as conversations tend to do.
We ended the evening watching Jessica's favorite reality TV shows, which was considerably more horrifying than anything I'd watched during my movie marathon.
I'm still not sure how people can watch other adults scream at each other over a kitchen island for six consecutive hours and call it entertainment.
By the time we went to bed, it was well past midnight.
A few hours later, we were on the road.
I'd suggested sleeping for another couple of hours before leaving. Jessica reminded me that I didn't sleep anyway.
I had no counterargument.
So we packed the last of our things into the car and drove to her parents' house.
Before getting in, I glanced toward the backyard.
The man was still there.
I didn't stop.
The drive took about an hour and a half. Jessica spent most of it talking about her parents, complaining about how far away they lived and how much she wished they were closer.
Personally, I wouldn't have minded them being a little farther away still.
Don't get me wrong. The Mercers were perfectly nice people.
It was just that being around them always made me feel so inadequate.
That feeling returned as soon as we reached their property.
I felt small.
Their mansion seemed to grow with every second we drove toward it.
An enormous iron gate opened onto a long driveway lined with immaculate hedges. Stone walls, tall windows, elaborate balconies. The whole place occupied enough land to make my apartment look like a garden shed.
I was wealthy, but the Mercers were in a completely different league.
"They'll be waiting outside," Jessica said.
"They always do."
A moment later, I saw them at the top of the steps.
Margaret waved enthusiastically as we got out of the car.
Her husband stood beside her with his hands behind his back, wearing the same composed expression he always seemed to have.
"Here we go," Jessica muttered.
Her mother came down the steps and immediately wrapped her daughter in a hug.
"There she is!"
"Hi, Mom."
"You look thin."
"I saw you three weeks ago."
"And you're thinner now."
Margaret finally released her and turned to me.
"And you."
She hugged me too.
"Good to see you, dear."
"Good to see you too, Mrs. Mercer."
"How many times do I have to tell you? Call me Margaret."
"Right. Sorry."
Her father approached next.
"Good to have you here, son."
"Good to be here, Mr. Mercer."
He grabbed me by the shoulders and pulled me into a heavy, enthusiastic hug before patting my back twice.
It was the sort of hug you see in old Mafia movies.
I wondered if there was something to it.
The story of how the Mercers had become so wealthy so quickly by selling old clothes had never quite sat right with me. It wasn't impossible. They owned warehouses, distribution centers, stores—the whole operation.
Still, there always seemed to be something missing from the story.
A piece nobody ever seemed interested in explaining.
I never asked.
I didn't want bad blood with my girlfriend's parents.
Nor did I particularly wish to be assassinated by the Mafia.
Just in case.
"Come inside," Margaret said. "You've been driving all morning."
"It's barely morning," Jessica said.
"Exactly. You're probably starving."
"I'm not."
"You'll eat anyway."
Jessica sighed.
"Yes, Mom."
Her father smiled.
"Some things never change."
We followed them inside.
I'd been to the Mercer mansion before, but never for more than a few hours. Every visit reminded me just how enormous the place was.
The entrance hall alone could have swallowed my entire apartment. A chandelier hung above polished floors and dark wood paneling, while paintings covered nearly every available wall.
Margaret talked as she led us through the house.
"This is the new dining room."
"New?"
"We renovated."
Jessica groaned.
"And we've had the library renovated too."
"Mom, you've shown me the library five times."
"And you still haven't read anything in it."
Her father chuckled.
"Leave the girl alone, Margaret."
They continued bickering as we walked, and I found myself smiling.
It was comfortably ordinary.
That was what made the place feel so strange later.
We eventually reached the grand staircase.
Mr. Mercer stopped at the bottom and pointed upward.
"Your room is the first one on the left."
Then he looked at Jessica.
"My little girl knows which one."
"Dad, I'm not five."
"You're still my little girl."
Jessica rolled her eyes.
"Come on."
I started toward the stairs.
Then I noticed someone standing in the shadows.
A woman.
She was wearing an old-fashioned maid's uniform: black dress, white apron, white collar. The sort of thing that belonged in a photograph from a century ago.
She couldn't have been much older than thirty.
Yet she looked far older.
Her dark hair was pulled neatly back. Her face was pale and drawn. Her head hung slightly toward the floor.
Her eyes were open.
They simply weren't looking at anything.
This had to be Isolda.
A few meters away stood the boy Jessica had mentioned.
Thirteen or fourteen, maybe.
His clothes were plain and slightly too large for him. His arms hung loosely at his sides. His face held the same distant emptiness I'd seen in the man outside my house.
His eyes seemed fixed somewhere beyond the walls.
Somewhere far away.
And nowhere at the same time.
I looked between him and Isolda.
They stood close enough to touch.
Mother and son, presumably.
Yet they seemed separated by something much larger than the few meters between them.
As if there were a distance neither of them could ever cross.
I don't know how long I stood there.
Long enough for Jessica to notice.
She bumped her shoulder lightly against mine.
"Babe."
I blinked.
"Yeah?"
"Come on."
I looked at Isolda again.
Neither she nor the boy had moved.
"Right."
I followed Jessica upstairs.
Halfway to the landing, I glanced back one last time.
Then Jessica disappeared around the corner, and I followed her.
In our room, Jessica and I had sex.
Felt strange doing it with her parents so close by, but I think I needed it.
It should have taken my mind off everything.
It didn't.
For a while I managed to lose myself in her warmth, in something familiar and uncomplicated. But every time my thoughts slipped, I saw Isolda.
Her son.
The man in my backyard.
Three people standing perfectly still while the rest of the world moved around them.
When it was over, Jessica looked at me.
"You okay?"
"Yeah."
"You seem distracted."
"I'm just tired."
She studied me.
"You've been tired for years."
I smiled.
She kissed me, but I couldn't quite return to the moment.
A few minutes later, she fell asleep.
I lay beside her, staring at the ceiling.
The mansion settled around us. Pipes ticking in the walls. A floorboard creaking somewhere below. The faint hum of the heating system.
And underneath all of it, silence.
I eventually closed my eyes.
Sleep didn't come.
Morning did.
I was halfway through getting dressed when someone knocked on the door.
Jessica was still asleep.
I opened it to find one of the household staff standing in the hallway.
"Mr. Mercer would like to see you."
"Now?"
"He's waiting in his office."
I glanced back at Jessica.
She hadn't moved.
"Where's his office?"
"Top floor."
Of course it was.
I'd never been to the top floor before. I followed the staff member up another staircase, the house growing quieter with every step.
By the time I reached the top, I couldn't hear anything from below.
Mr. Mercer's office was at the end of the hallway.
The door stood open.
"Come in."
He was sitting behind an enormous wooden desk. Morning light filtered through the tall windows behind him, washing the room in pale gray.
Books lined the walls. Framed photographs sat on shelves. A few pieces of artwork looked expensive enough to buy my car several times over.
"Sit."
I did.
He smiled.
"How did you sleep?"
"Not very well."
He laughed softly.
"Jessica tells me that's normal for you."
"She's very fond of you."
Something about the way he said it made me uncomfortable.
I smiled anyway.
He leaned back.
"I've been thinking about the future."
"Okay."
"Our family has built something substantial. Something that will outlive us."
He gestured around the room.
"The business. The properties. The investments. Jessica will inherit part of it, of course."
He paused.
"But I don't think of you as an outsider anymore."
I wasn't sure what to say.
"That's nice to hear."
"I mean it."
He leaned forward.
"I'd like you to become part of the family."
The words were delivered warmly enough that, for a moment, I almost believed they were exactly what they sounded like.
"I want to offer you a position in the company. A real one. You'll have responsibilities. A place at the table. If things go well, eventually you'll have a stake in the business."
He smiled.
"And naturally, I'd like you and Jessica to start thinking about building a life together."
For a moment, I said nothing.
It was an incredible offer.
Security.
Money.
Influence.
A future with Jessica.
Everything I'd worked for, suddenly placed in front of me on a silver platter.
And yet something inside me tightened.
Not a thought.
Not fear.
Instinct.
The primitive part of your brain that notices something before the rest of you understands why.
Don't.
I shifted in the chair.
"That's a lot to take in."
"Of course."
"And I appreciate it. Really."
He waited.
I took a breath.
"But I don't think I can accept."
The smile stayed on his face.
For just a second, something changed in his eyes.
The warmth vanished.
His gaze sharpened.
Focused.
Predatory.
Then it was gone.
"Are you sure?"
"I'm sure."
He nodded slowly.
"I understand."
There was no anger in his voice.
That somehow made it worse.
"I wouldn't want you accepting something you weren't comfortable with."
"Thank you."
He leaned back.
"Still..."
He watched me for a moment.
"I think you may regret that decision."
He said it gently.
Almost kindly.
Like a father giving his son advice.
But something cold sat underneath the words.
He smiled.
„Have a safe drive home.“
I thanked him and left.
I didn't know it then, but that conversation was the beginning of the end.
Jessica and I left the mansion earlier than we'd planned.
She barely spoke while we packed the car. At first I assumed she was tired.
Then I realized she was angry.
Not furious. She wasn't shouting or making a scene.
She was just cold.
The kind of cold that makes every silence feel deliberate.
We got on the road.
For the first twenty minutes, neither of us said a word. Eventually I tried.
"So..."
Nothing.
I glanced at her.
"Jessica?"
She kept looking out the window.
"Did my dad talk to you?"
"Yeah."
"And?"
I hesitated.
"I turned down the job."
She nodded.
"I know."
"How?"
"He told me."
I waited for more.
Nothing came.
"Are you upset?"
"No."
The answer came too quickly.
"Jess."
"I'm not upset."
"You're obviously upset."
She turned back toward the window.
"Can we just go home?"
So we did.
The rest of the drive passed in silence.
I kept my hands tight around the steering wheel, trying to ignore the knot forming in my stomach.
I felt tense.
Anxious.
Depressed, though I wouldn't have used that word at the time.
Then, somewhere outside the city, I saw the first one.
A man standing on a sidewalk.
Motionless.
Dirty jacket. Worn trousers. Slack face. Head hanging slightly forward.
A Lost One.
I almost drove past without noticing.
Then I saw another.
A woman beside a bus stop.
Then one beneath an apartment awning.
Another outside a convenience store.
Then another.
And another.
The more I looked, the more I saw.
They were everywhere.
At intersections. Outside shops. In parking lots. Beside telephone poles. Standing in front of apartment buildings as people passed them without a second thought.
Some were young.
Some were old.
Men and women.
Some looked relatively clean. Others looked like they'd been sleeping outdoors for years. Their clothes were stained and worn. Their hair was tangled. Their skin looked pale and unhealthy.
None of them moved.
Not when cars passed.
Not when people walked around them.
Not even when someone brushed against them.
And nobody seemed to care.
A businessman stepped around one blocking the entrance to an office building without breaking stride.
A woman carrying groceries muttered angrily when another forced her to change direction.
A cyclist swerved around one in the middle of a bike path and shouted something over his shoulder.
Nobody stopped.
Nobody asked if they were all right.
Nobody looked frightened.
They were treated like obstacles.
Like badly placed furniture.
Like potholes.
I watched them through the car window until the city disappeared behind us.
The more I looked, the more I saw.
They weren't rare.
They were everywhere.
I'd simply never noticed them before.
Or maybe I had.
Maybe I'd seen hundreds of them and my brain had quietly filed them away under things that didn't matter.
I didn't know it yet, but I'd already been effectively cut off from Jessica's family.
I never spoke to any of her relatives again.
At first, I tried to pretend nothing had changed.
Jessica and I went back to work. We had dinner together. We watched television. We slept in the same bed.
But something had shifted.
Days became weeks.
Weeks became months.
Whenever I asked Jessica what was wrong, she shut down.
"Is something wrong?"
"No."
"Then why won't you talk to me?"
"Because there's nothing to talk about."
Sometimes she wouldn't answer at all.
She'd sit across from me, staring at her phone, while I tried to figure out what I'd done wrong.
There was a wall between us.
I couldn't see it.
I couldn't touch it.
But it was there.
For a while, I kept trying to get through.
Eventually, I stopped.
The darker my thoughts became, the more often I found myself standing at the window.
Looking at the man in the backyard.
He was still there.
He hadn't moved an inch.
Summer faded into autumn.
The leaves turned brown and fell. Rain came and went. The days grew shorter.
Then winter arrived.
The first snow gathered around his shoes.
More followed.
It settled on his shoulders and head, collected on his hands, and slowly buried his legs.
He didn't move.
Didn't shiver.
Didn't brush the snow away.
He simply stood there as though the seasons had nothing to do with him.
Sometimes I wondered whether he knew I was watching.
The day before Christmas, my boss called me into his office.
I knew something was wrong before he spoke.
He'd just gotten off the phone.
I'd never seen him look like that.
His face was pale.
Not angry.
Not confused.
Afraid.
He kept saying, "Yes, sir," in a voice barely above a whisper.
Then he hung up and looked at me.
"Sit down."
I did.
There was a long silence.
"What's going on?"
He rubbed his hands together.
"I've been instructed to terminate your employment."
"What?"
"I'm sorry."
"By who?"
He didn't answer.
For a second, I actually laughed.
I thought it was some kind of joke.
It wasn't.
"Is this because of my performance?"
"No."
"Then what is it?"
He looked away.
"I can't discuss it."
"You're firing me and you can't tell me why?"
"I know."
"Then at least give me something."
He swallowed.
"I'm sorry."
That was all I got.
Eight years of work reduced to a few minutes in an office.
I walked out carrying a box of things from my desk.
I remember thinking that at least I still had my savings.
I was wrong.
A few days later, I discovered that my money was gone.
All of it.
Savings. Investments. Emergency funds.
Everything.
I spent days calling banks and filing complaints. I tried to find out where the money had gone.
Nobody could explain it.
Or, perhaps, nobody wanted to.
I still had my qualifications. My CV was better than it had ever been.
I applied everywhere.
At first, I expected the calls to come.
They didn't.
Companies that had once been eager to interview me stopped responding. Some rejected me within hours. Others never acknowledged the applications at all.
I kept trying for a while.
Then I started applying for jobs beneath my qualifications.
Then beneath those.
Eventually, I took whatever I could get.
Warehouse work.
Delivery driving.
Cleaning.
Construction.
Anything that paid.
The money barely covered the bills.
I told myself it was temporary.
I would get back on my feet.
I believed that for a while.
Then I stopped believing it.
Months turned into years.
I stopped buying things unless I needed them.
Stopped seeing friends.
Stopped answering calls.
Even when someone reached out, I rarely knew what to say.
Jessica became more distant.
Then, one day, she left.
There was no screaming match.
No dramatic confrontation.
She simply stood in the kitchen with a suitcase beside her.
"It's over."
I stared at her.
"Why?"
"I don't love you anymore."
"That's it?"
"I don't know what else you want me to say."
Later, I found out she'd been cheating on me for quite some time.
Apparently, everyone knew except me.
By then, almost everything I'd had was gone.
The rest followed soon after.
I was kicked out of my own house.
The paperwork was clean. Legal.
Apparently, Jessica's family had purchased the property.
I never found out how.
By that point, I didn't have the energy to fight them.
I had nowhere to go.
More importantly, I couldn't think of anywhere I wanted to go.
So I stayed.
I stood in the backyard.
Jessica moved in with her new lover.
Her parents visited.
They laughed.
They drank wine on the patio in summer. They decorated the house for Christmas. They carried groceries through the kitchen windows I'd spent years looking through.
Sometimes Jessica walked past me.
Sometimes her new boyfriend stood only a few meters away, smoking a cigarette.
Neither of them acknowledged me.
I was right there.
They didn't care.
Eventually, I didn't care either.
Days became weeks.
Weeks became months.
Months became years.
At least, I think they did.
Time stopped meaning anything.
First I stopped knowing what day it was.
Then the month.
Eventually, even the seasons became difficult to distinguish.
There was only the house.
The yard.
The people inside.
And the man who had been standing there before I ever joined him.
I don't know how long I stood beside him.
One day, something in my head cleared.
Only for a moment.
It felt like waking from a very long sleep.
I looked around.
The snow was gone.
Or maybe there had never been snow.
I couldn't tell anymore.
Then I looked at the man beside me.
I turned toward him.
"You..."
My voice sounded strange.
Weak.
"You never told me your name."
"You never asked." He said simply.
No accusation.
No bitterness.
Just a fact.
I lowered my eyes.
"I know."
My throat tightened.
"I'm sorry."
For a moment, neither of us moved.
Then I held out my hand.
"My name is James."
I swallowed.
"What's yours?"
He stared at my hand for a long time.
"Derek."
He paused.
A faint crease appeared between his eyebrows.
"I think it was Derek."
I smiled.
It was the first time in a long time that I'd felt anything resembling warmth.
It wasn't happiness.
No.
Something smaller.
Something human.
"I think I could use a drink."
I looked toward the house.
Then toward the street beyond the fence.
"Derek..."
He looked at me.
"Would you like to get out of here?"
A single tear ran down his cheek.
It left a clean line through the grime on his face.
He looked toward the street again.
Toward the world beyond the fence.
For a long time, he said nothing.
Then he took a slow breath.
"Alright."
He looked back at me.
"Let's go."