Aidan suspected that the stranger didn’t smile like that normally, might even be surprised if he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. The man looked oddly… happy. Not lost or harried, but happy. Aidan almost wished he hadn’t said anything, found himself thinking that things would have been better if they had never come here at all. He felt somehow that it was his fault – their fault, his and Eve’s. Why couldn’t they leave the man the way he was? It would be kinder, wouldn’t it? He might stay like this forever, or he might gradually fade away, but maybe that’s what heaven was. Maybe the man was dead, and this was his ghost, or his soul, or spirit, or something like that, and this is where he belonged.
“I hate to be the one to tell you this…” Eve began.
The man looked away, the smile slipping, the contentment hardening into something that happiness had no part in.
“You’re going to say you’re sorry again, aren’t you.”
[Final total at the end of the day: 50,280 words for November]
