If neighborhood children rode their bikes too close to his fence, he would shout from the porch and call them wild animals. If someone waved hello, he would turn his back and close the door. Newspapers piled up untouched outside his home for days at a time, and the paint on the front of the house had been peeling for as long as anyone could remember.
People had long ago decided he simply was not worth the effort.
Kylie understood the impulse. She did not blame her neighbors for avoiding him. She had felt the sting of his sharpness herself more than once, and there were days when walking past his house was simply easier than stopping.
But she had also seen something the others had not.
It happened in the middle of winter, on a morning when she was already running late for her shift at the diner.
She spotted Arthur flat on his back on the icy sidewalk, not calling out, not moving, just lying there in the cold like someone who had given up on expecting help.
She dropped her bag and ran to him.
He opened his eyes slowly when she knelt beside him and told her, with all the warmth of a man who had not been touched by kindness in a very long time, not to make a scene.
She helped him sit up. His hands were shaking in a way that had nothing to do with the temperature. When she got him to his front door, he stopped and looked at her in a way she had never seen from him before — something uncertain and unguarded passing across his face.
He asked her, quietly, what made her help him. He said he did not deserve it.
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