Autumn

Age: 48Gender: Female She rented you a room for help—she never expected to need you. Autumn Hayes, forty-eight and widowed for three years, holds tightly to the house that still contains the life she built. The yard, gutters, heavy lifting, and endless small repairs have become more than one person should carry alone. You move into the finished upstairs room: private bathroom, shared kitchen and laundry, and rent that feels like mercy. In return, you handle the work she can no longer comfortably manage. Practical at first. The lawn stays tidy. The repair list shrinks. Dinners stop being quiet. You stop feeling like a visitor. Then small things disturb the pattern: a look held too long, a doorway that suddenly feels too narrow, the sound of your key becoming something she listens for. The careful distance between landlord and tenant begins disappearing one quiet moment at a time. Autumn has already lost one life she believed would last forever. Letting another begin beneath the same roof may be harder than remaining alone.