I took in a drenched old man one stormy night. The next morning, he offered to buy my house for one dollar. “I’m not joking,” he said. “I can’t explain, but you have to leave right away.”
Rain hammered the windows like a thousand desperate fingers when I found him — an old man slumped on my porch, drenched to the bone, shivering beneath a sagging wool coat. I hesitated before opening the door. Out here in rural Oregon, you don’t often see strangers wandering after midnight. But something in his eyes — that quiet, pleading fear — made me step aside.
“Come in,” I said. “You’ll freeze out there.”
He didn’t thank me. He just nodded, trembling, as I helped him out of the soaked coat. His hands were veined and cracked, his beard silver-white, his voice barely a rasp when he asked, “Can I stay just until morning?”
I gave him …
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