That night, I stayed beside him.
Machines hummed softly in the background, steady and indifferent. The room smelled faintly of antiseptic and lavender. I kept holding his hand, afraid that if I let go, I’d lose him all over again.
“Why didn’t you just tell me?” I whispered.
His breathing was shallow but calm. “I didn’t want to… ruin your life,” he said slowly. “You looked happy. Safe. I just wanted to see that for myself.”
Tears blurred my vision. All those moments I’d felt watched — planting tulips, dragging out the trash bins, laughing at the parade — he had been there. Not as a predator.
As a brother making sure his little sister was okay.
“I was sick when I found you,” he continued. “Didn’t have much time. I didn’t know how to walk up and say, ‘Hi, I’m the brother you lost.’ So I moved close. I listened. I made sure you were safe. That was enough.”
“It wasn’t enough,” I said gently. “You could’ve had more.”
He smiled faintly. “I have more. You’re here.”
The nurse returned later to adjust his medication. She gave me a soft look — the kind professionals give when they’ve seen this moment too many times.
Just before dawn, his grip tightened slightly.
“Annie,” he murmured.
“I’m here.”
“Don’t be alone.”
“I won’t,” I promised.
And sometime after that, with the first light creeping through the blinds, Daniel slipped away.
The funeral was small.
A few neighbors from the apartment building came. The woman in the bathrobe. The quiet man from next door. They told me stories about “Daniel” — how he volunteered to fix broken mailboxes, how he fed stray cats, how he once paid a neighbor’s overdue electricity bill without leaving his name.
Across the street, our old neighbors watched from their porches as I carried Jasper back into my house.
The house that Daniel had chosen.
Not to haunt.
To protect.
I kept the photos from the apartment — not the ones that made me uneasy, but the ones from public events, from parades and fairs. I put them in a box with his letter and our birth records.
Proof that I hadn’t imagined him.
Proof that I had once been someone’s little sister before I even knew the word.
Jasper still runs to the door sometimes, as if expecting him to walk up the driveway again. And sometimes, when I’m planting tulips or taking out the trash, I glance across the street.
Not because I feel watched.
But because, for a little while, I was.
And it turns out, I was loved.