By the end of any day, her feet were trashed from standing for so many hours straight, so she normally took the elevator, but it was inevitable that fate continued working against her on a day as horrible as this. A large sign was taped to the metal doors: Out of Order.

Stormy trudged up the stairs with her giant purse in tow. As she was about to reach her floor, she began digging for her keys. Good coordination skills weren’t one of Stormy’s strong points—add a tired mind, and in true fashion, the strap slipped from her shoulder. Half the contents of her purse spilled out.

The sound of keys, makeup, and coins could be heard all the way to the bottom of the stairwell. Stormy dropped to her knees and began to sob. She’d had enough, and there was nothing that was going to hold it back.

When she heard a door open, and then someone moving down the stairs toward her, she tried pulling herself together, but she was just too tired. She looked down, hoping whoever it was just passed on by. The last thing she wanted to do was talk about why she was sobbing in the middle of a stairwell.

“What’s the matter, darling?” Sherman asked, compassionately stopping next to her.

The sound of his warm voice made her lean back against the wall as she looked at him, trying desperately to still the tears. She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

“It can’t be all that bad,” he assured her as he patted her hand.

“I’m sorry,” she said with a hiccup.

“Don’t apologize, just tell me what’s got you so upset,” he said with the gentle smile she loved him for.

She’d been blessed to meet this man at one of the worst times in her life—a couple months after she’d lost her father. Sherman had been kind, and reminded her so much of her dad that she’d immediately latched on to him. Over the years, if too much time passed without seeing him, she had to go and seek him out. Then when she had lost her mother, Sherman had been the one to hold her.

“You’re here late tonight,” she finally said as she began to control her tears.

He was picking up items near where she sat and putting them back in her purse, which made her want to break out into sobs again, but she somehow managed to hold them back.

“I ended up visiting too long with Ms. Penny Little. Then the dang elevators broke again, so I had to talk myself into coming down all these stairs,” he said with a chuckle.

“I’m sorry. I’ll help you down them,” she told him, glad to focus on him and not herself.

He gazed at her fondly for a moment. “This is why I appreciate you so much, young lady. Even though you’re obviously having a bad day, you’re still willing to help an old man out,” he told her before shaking his head. “I know how badly your feet hurt at the end of a day, so I won’t be responsible for you walking any extra steps.”

Her heart warmed at his words. She wanted to be seen as a good person, as good as her parents had been, and she felt as if she were failing them every single day. She wasn’t nearly as giving, as caring, as sacrificing as they’d been, so for a man she admired to tell her she was better than okay made her want to jump across the short distance between them and grab hold of him in a bear hug. She barely managed to refrain from doing just that.

“I like you, Sherman. You make me smile when I feel like crying.”

“There shouldn’t be anything in life that makes us sit and cry all alone,” he told her while patting her shoulder. “Instead of giving up and plopping down in this dingy stairwell, tell me what’s wrong and I’m sure we can find a solution.”

Stormy struggled with whether or not to share her woes with him. It really was her own fault for allowing things to get so out of control. But as he sat there with an encouraging smile on his lips, she decided she really did need a friend to complain to. When she was done, maybe she wouldn’t feel like the world was coming to an end.

“I’m losing my apartment, my boss thinks I’m a horrible employee, and everyone I meet seems to hate me—especially disgustingly attractive pilots who could at least have the courtesy to remember my face.”

Sherman sat there quietly for a moment, and Stormy wondered if maybe she’d offered up too much information. Most likely she had, but then again, it wasn’t as if he was going to go around blasting her secrets to the world.

“In life there are always trials. We don’t necessarily understand why they happen, but eventually we see there’s a reason for them. Sometimes everything has to go wrong before it can turn around and start going right,” he said before pausing and looking at the contents of her purse still trailing down the stairs. Then he turned back to her and continued speaking.

“It will work out for the best sooner than you think. As clichéd as that might sound, it’s true, and all you have to do is pick yourself up. I’ll even loan you my cane if you’d like,” Sherman said in his most gentle voice.

“You can never find that cane,” she replied.

“Because then I’d have to admit I’m getting old.”

She smiled. She also realized that he was right. She would get nowhere sitting on the stairs crying. She needed to gather her fallen items, go to her apartment, and start making plans. Her mother had always told her a person chose to feel sorry for him- or herself, and no matter how bad a day she might be having, she could guarantee someone, somewhere else was having a worse day.

“There’s always tomorrow,” she finally said. “I’m going to miss you, Sherman. You’ve always been so good to me.”