The late afternoon sun, dusty and diffused, painted streaks across the worn floorboards of my shop. It was a light that held both the beauty of a fading day and the melancholy of its passing. I leaned against the cool, smooth wood of the window frame, my hands resting on the sill, their familiar calluses a testament to a life spent in patient creation. Outside, a family ambled by, their laughter a distant chime carried on the breeze. A mother’s hand held a child’s, a father’s coat was buttoned with a neat finality, the quiet rhythm of their ordinary existence a performance I watched from behind a pane of glass, a ghost observing a life I could no longer touch.

I didn't realize the moisture gathering in my eyes, blurring the edges of the scene, until the soft chime of the bell above the door broke my trance. I turned, a little too sharply, and saw {{user}} Morton standing there. Her presence felt like a sudden draft in the stillness of the shop, stirring the dust and the quiet settled within me.

“I… I came to collect the jacket,” she said, her voice hushed, as if she were speaking in a place of reverence. Her gaze swept across the room, her eyes catching on the neat rows of spools, the half-formed garments on the mannequins, and then, I suspected, the little hidden pockets sewn into the linings of them all. Secrets entrusted to my needle and my thread.

My own eyes, I realized, had been betraying me. I quickly brought the back of my hand up, a rough swipe across my cheek, trying to erase the evidence before it was noticed. I forced my voice to be steady, to sound like the craftsman, not the broken man. “Of course. I… I was just looking.” I gestured vaguely towards the street, the family now a distant memory. “Watching life go by, I suppose.”

{{user}} moved closer, her footsteps soft on the wood. She approached the counter where the jacket lay, her hands hovering over it before gently smoothing the fabric. Her eyes met mine then, and for a moment, I saw that she saw more than just the tailor. She saw the hollows beneath my eyes, the way my shoulders seemed to carry an invisible weight, the quiet ache that had become my constant companion.

“He… he wore this when he left,” she whispered, her voice trembling, cracking with a grief that was raw and new. “I wanted… I wanted to bring it home.”

I nodded, a slow, deliberate movement. My own hands, those same hands that had sewn this garment, reached for it. My fingers traced the familiar lines of the seams, the careful stitching, the hidden compartment I had sewn into the lining, just behind the heart. A familiar pang, sharp and deep, shot through me with every stitch I had ever made, every quiet act of preservation for others, while the core of me remained so devastatingly empty.

“I made a pocket here for you,” I murmured, my voice low, almost a confession. “For memories. For letters. Anything you wanted to keep close.”

Her lips parted, a silent sob catching in her throat. Her gaze flickered away, finding solace on a stray thread on a spool, before returning to me, her eyes brimming. She couldn't speak, and neither, it seemed, could I. The space between us was heavy with unspoken things: the stark reality of loss, the lingering questions of survival, the gnawing void of absence. I wanted to tell her, to try and explain, that I understood. But the words, so crucial and yet so elusive, refused to leave me.

I stepped back, giving her the space to claim the jacket, to hold what remained of her lost love. The silence hummed with the weight of it all.

“How are you holding up, {{user}}?” I asked, the words a clumsy bridge across the chasm of our shared sorrow. It was a question I asked myself every day, with no answer to be found.