He brought things home for her.

It had been flowers, in the beginning. She loved flowers, but only when he had stolen them from someone else’s yard. She could tell, too. He had tried buying a flower, once, and tearing the stem. He had slept on the couch that night. And then of course there was the bouquet he had stolen from a kerbside florist, that she had made him take back.

So he brought things home for her. The fuzzy dice from a parked car; a stuffed toy from the lost and found; letters from a shop’s sign. And, at least once a week, flowers.