Instead, he sets two cups of hot cocoa on the nightstand—just like he has every morning for thirty days—and sits on the floor with his back against her bed frame. Waiting. Not for her to be fixed. Just for her to be ready.

The last morning arrives without ceremony.

The final chapter isn’t a grand reunion with the world. It’s the quietest kind of courage: a girl stepping out the front door in her sailor-collar uniform, and her brother locking up behind them—not dragging her toward the future, but walking beside her into it.

He doesn’t say, “I knew you could do it.” He doesn’t say, “See? That wasn’t so hard.”