Leo

A man kept a small book by his door, and in it he wrote the names of everyone who said they would come back.

He did not write them with hope. He wrote them the way a shopkeeper writes a debt: a line, a date, the thing promised. Then he closed the book and got on with his day.

Some came back. A boy who swore he would bring him river water brought the jar, six months late, the lid rusted shut. A woman returned for a coat she had left, and never mentioned the coat. Two of the names belonged to men who had died, and he knew it when he wrote them.

He kept writing anyway. Not because he believed the names. Because the writing was the only part of a promise that was ever his. Anyone can say tomorrow. Only he could keep the page.

Years on, a visitor saw the book and asked what it was for.

He said: so that when they do come back, nobody has to explain the gap.

That night he wrote the last name of the day, closed the book, and left the door unlocked, as he always had.