I see her every morning at the third stoplight. Canvas tote. Blue cardigan. Hair that falls across one eye. Not beautiful. Not ugly. Just a face that keeps returning. She bends once to pick up my bus card. “You’ll need it,” she says. Small voice. Kind. That tiny kindness lodges in my chest like a splinter. At home, the house is a thing that breathes wrong. My wife fills the rooms with polite anger. She wants things done....