"Couldn't think of any other reason you'd stop brightening up my stoop," he says wryly, even though he knows disappearance had flashed through his mind briefly, but it'd been so depressing, he hadn't wanted to entertain the idea. Looks like he should've. "Jim, don't apologize," he orders. "You do whatever you need to do with this."

"Just don't go out and kill yourself, would you? Last thing I need is to scrape you off a sidewalk because you decided to go extreme somehow."