Maybe he even willingly agreed to help her. It...really don't matter much, now. Funny how a story can just up and end like that, going from meandering along at its own pace to simply dying, the thread shriveled up and the lead simply dissipating from the setting.

Grief takes all sorts of forms in the end. Don't it?

"She was a good kid," he says at last, quietly. "Could hold her own."

Maybe even against whatever's waiting for her back home.