"Where's Alfred?" she asks. He should have been back by now.

The stranger in the coat looks up at her and smiles a broken smile and she can't breathe for a moment because—she's afraid. That this stranger will tell her that her precious baby boy is dead. She's not sure she could survive the heartbreak.

"He's at boarding school," he says. "He got a scholarship. He didn't want to leave without saying goodbye but—he had to."

The stranger's voice cracks and Leticia frowns because something was not quite right. She's happy that Alfred was able to break free from Gilland but—there's something missing. Something wrong.

"He sent you a letter, though," the stranger says, pulling out an envelope. "And he'll write to you as much as he can. When he's not… busy."

She takes the envelope from his hand, fingers shaking—it's Alfred's handwriting on the front, there's no question of it. She clutches it to her chest and smiles and falls asleep, the feeling of something missing all but forgotten.

The stranger comes back often to check up on her—she likes him better than the doctor. He smiles with too many teeth and laughs a bit too loudly, but he brings letters from Alfred and he will answer all her questions—tell her the things her boy doesn't write.

"He's not very good at math," the stranger says while Isla fusses with the IV. "But after this semester, he doesn't have to take any more."

"He always hated it," Leticia says. "…Is he happy?"

"Very. He's kind of a nerd. He misses you a lot, though."

"Good. I worry about him, you know. He's very sensitive. I could never forgive myself if he got hurt."

"Don't worry," the stranger says, and there's a distressed note in his voice. His smile doesn't falter but it's too toothy, too wide. "He'll be okay. He's one tough customer, just like his mom."

She laughs a little at that because she has never been strong, not since Alfred was born, and it saps the last of her strength to do so. How strange, Leticia thinks before she falls asleep. Her hand is wet. How strange that it's raining indoors.

The letters stop coming. The stranger stops visiting. Isla keeps giving her medicine, and she says that she's still getting paid so he's probably not dead.

When the stranger returns, there are bruises on his lips and shadows under his eyes that were not there before. "This is a sylphjay," he says, "so you can still talk to Alfred if I ever get hung up again."

"I can't accept this," she says. "I have nothing to pay you with." Except herself and never. Never again.

"…All I want is for you to live. So that someday you can go home with—Alfred. I promised that I would make sure that happened, so just try to hang on just a little longer, okay? I'm so close. I'm almost there."

She pauses, staring at the stranger with the coat. He is familiar in a way she can't place—it sits on the tip of her tongue but she can't quite put it into words. She's tired, too tired to think about it properly—maybe after a nap, she'll remember. So she just says "thank you."

Alfred doesn't come home for break—she can't quite remember why but she supposes it doesn't matter.

"I'm almost glad he isn't here," she admits one day to the stranger. "No one should ever have to watch their parent die."

"You're not going to die," he tells her. "You're going to be fine. I'll carry you back home if I have to."

Sometimes, Leticia wonders where the stranger's family is—surely he has someone waiting for him to come home. Surely he has more than this rundown apartment and a woman who does not know his name.

Her fever spikes and her hands go numb. Alfred writes to her and his letters grow more and more distressed. Finally, the stranger comes back reluctantly, as if he was afraid he was coming back to a dead body. He stares at her as if she's a ghost.

"Could you copy down what I say?" she asks. "I don't want Alfred to worry."

He writes, even though his hands are shaking worse than hers. Later, after he has left, she finds a paper with Dear Alfred written across the top and she smiles and shakes her head because it's written in Alfred's handwritting. He was always so silly like that, writing letters to himself.

"I don't know your name," she says one day.

The stranger pulls the covers to her shoulders. He wipes sweat and sickness off of her face and musters up a shaky smile.

"It doesn't matter." There is something in his voice that tells her that no, it's important. Very much so. But her question is lost because she coughs until she can't breath and the only thing she can see is darkness.

Perhaps, she knew all along that she would die alone in that tiny room.

She finds the little packets of poison but says nothing—her time has been long since up. It's far too late. In a moment of clarity, she realizes that she doesn't want to live this way, a shell of her former self. It's not fair to herself. It's not fair to Alfred. It's not fair to the stranger in the coat.

Life isn't fair.

So she writes a letter—her last one to Alfred, asking him to forgive Isla and move on, because he has a bright future ahead of him, one that doesn't involve revenge. She's not worried about him, even though she probably should be. He has written to her about the two kitty cats he has adopted—about the lonely little one he found in a shack—about the old cat that took them all under his wing—about the one that loves fruit and tries her hardest at everything—and she knows that he won't ever be alone again. Maybe it's not the ending she had hoped for, but it's enough, it has to be. Maybe even better.

She thinks about the stranger in the coat for a while—about how the last time he visited, he brought other people with him, how he looked a little less broken and just a little bit brighter. How the dark haired boy threaded their fingers together when his voice cracked a little bit. That's good, she thinks as the darkness closing in. It's good.

Alfred deserves something good in his life.

Giving birth is something she can't forget soon enough.

The nurse looks horrified that Leticia doesn't want to hold it—that she doesn't want to see it. The little leech that sapped her life away. But it just keeps screaming, and screaming and screaming and screaming—"give it here," she finally snaps.

The moment the nurse places it in her arms, it stops. It wraps its hand around one of her fingers, staring at her with it's tiny eyes—her eyes. He has her eyes.

"His name is Alfred Vint Svent," her husband says when he returns that night. His business meeting had been more important than his sickly wife going into labor. "After my father."

Leticia is too busy holding Alfred's tiny hand to come up with a proper response.