Flora found the note before the sun had fully risen, its creases cutting deeper than any needle ever had. She read the trembling lines again and again, tracing the apology, the promise, the hurried scrawl of a son who loved her enough to leave. The sewing machine sat still for the first time in years, the unfinished hem hanging like a question she could not answer. In the quiet, she chose to believe that chasing light was not a betrayal of home.

When Joey finally returned, the man in the white coat was both familiar and foreign. Flora saw the boy in his eyes, the nights in that cramped room etched into the tired set of his shoulders. She held his stethoscope as if it were proof that sacrifice could bloom into something gentler than regret. Between them, unspoken apologies softened into understanding, and the space his leaving had carved became room for pride.