“Easy,” I whispered.
He stared at me with enormous eyes.
I took off my jacket and wrapped him in it. He weighed almost nothing.
Walking home, I held him against my chest and kept one hand over the bundle, afraid that if the trembling stopped, it would mean something terrible.
For the first few days, he lived beneath my spare-room dresser.
I put water nearby, made a bed from old towels, and offered small amounts of food. He barely ate while I was watching.
Eventually, I pulled a chair into the room and sat there with a book.
I didn’t reach for him.
Sometimes I read aloud, mostly because the silence made me worry about whether he was still breathing.
After a while, I would hear him move.
Then eat.
Weeks passed before he stayed out when I entered.
The first evening he followed me into the living room, I pretended not to notice.
