Still, there is an ache tucked into routine, an awareness that steadiness is not the same as contentment. In the quiet moments—standing at the back door watching the rain, folding a shirt that used to belong to someone else—he feels the weight of choices made and deferred. There are evenings when he returns home with the taste of city coffee still in his mouth and wonders which version of himself will come through the doorway: the patient provider, the tired confessor, the man who forgets to ask for help.
