The building is ordinary. Three floors, a buzzer panel at the door, a staircase that smells like old carpet.

  The caretaker gave me the key. She kept it because she didn’t know what else to do with it. She said it felt wrong to give it to anyone else.

  I stand outside the door for a moment.

  Then I unlock it and go in.

  The apartment is small. One room, a kitchen along one wall, a window that looks out onto the street. It’s clean. Quiet. The curtains are open and afternoon light comes in across the floor.

  There’s a glass in the drying rack in the kitchen. Washed and left to dry. I look at it for a moment.

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  She washed a glass before she left, I think. She was that kind of person. She took care of things even at the end.

  She got that from me.

  I move through the room slowly. A desk with books stacked in a particular order. A small plant on the windowsill, long dead now but someone put it there once because they wanted something living in the room. A coat on the back of the door.

  And on the wall, above the desk, a piece of paper held up with tape.

  I walk to it.

  The handwriting is careful, deliberate, the hand of someone who meant every word.

  When mom comes back, I’ll tell her I’m sorry and then I’ll show her how much I miss and love her.

  I stand in front of it.

  I put my hand flat on the wall beside it. I stay like that for a long time.

  She kept this, I think. She moved it from wall to wall and she kept it.

  She kept waiting.

  I sit down on the edge of her bed. I look at the room. I look at everything in it that tells me who she was, this person I made and left and never came back for.

  I stay there until the light changes.