My appendix ruptured at 2 a.m., and I called my parents seventeen times before the world began to blur. My mother finally texted back: “Your sister’s baby shower is tomorrow. We can’t leave now.”

Instead, Gerald Maize lived in a small white house with blue shutters, a vegetable garden, and wind chimes that sang whenever the breeze moved. The living room smelled faintly of cedar and coffee. There were books everywhere, stacked in uneven towers. A quilt lay folded over the back of the couch.

“This was my mother’s,” he said, touching the quilt. “She would have liked you.”

The guest room had fresh sheets and a vase of daisies on the dresser.

“I asked Ruth what people put in a guest room,” he admitted. “She said flowers. I said, ‘What kind?’ She said, ‘Not funeral ones.’ So I panicked at the grocery store.”

I looked at the daisies and smiled.

“They’re perfect.”

That first night, I woke around 3 a.m. drenched in sweat, heart racing, convinced I was back on the floor of my apartment with my body turning against me.

Before I could call out, Gerald knocked softly on the door.

“Holly?”

I wiped my face. “How did you know?”

“The floorboards creak. Also, I haven’t slept properly since 1997.”

He stood in the doorway holding a glass of water.

“Do you want company, or do you want me to go away?”

Another question.

Always a question.

“Company,” I said.