PART 3 — THE PROMISE
I went upstairs that morning differently.
For the first time, I noticed things I’d never bothered noticing before.
Daniel’s curtains.
The small lamp beside his window.
The flowers sitting outside his door.
The little brass plaque beside his apartment.
I had walked past those things hundreds of times.
I’d never really looked.
That evening, I didn’t complain about the light.
Instead, I watched.
At 7 p.m., the kitchen light came on.
At 7:05, the hallway.
At 7:10, the bedroom.
And at 7:15, the little lamp beside the window.
The same routine.
Every night.
But now I understood.
It wasn’t a habit.
It was a promise.
A few days later, I knocked on his door.
He opened it almost immediately.
“Hello.”
“Hi.”
He looked surprised.
“Is something wrong?”
“No.”
I held up a small paper bag.
“I made too much soup.”
He stared at the bag.
Then at me.
“You made soup?”
“Yes.”
“For me?”
“Unless you have another neighbor hiding behind me.”
For the first time, I saw him laugh.
It was quiet.
But real.
He invited me inside.
His apartment looked different from how I’d imagined it.
It wasn’t cluttered.
It wasn’t strange.
It was incredibly clean.
Almost painfully clean.
There were photographs everywhere.
Daniel and his wife at a beach.
Daniel and his wife at a Christmas party.
Daniel and his wife standing in front of the apartment building.
And one photograph on the mantel showed them much younger.
They were laughing.
She had her arms around his neck.
He looked at her as though she were the only person in the world.
I pointed toward it.
“That’s your wife?”
He nodded.
“Her name was Elena.”
“She was beautiful.”
“She was.”
He smiled.
“She hated having her picture taken.”
I laughed softly.
“What happened to her?”
He was silent for a moment.
“Cancer.”
The word came quietly.
“She was brave.”
He sat down.
“Near the end, she couldn’t walk much. The doctors told us she might have only weeks.”
I listened.
“She became frightened at night. Sometimes she’d wake up and panic because the room was dark.”
He looked toward the hallway.
“So I left the lights on.”
“All of them?”
“All of them.”
“Why?”
“Because she once asked me if I would stay awake until morning.”
His voice cracked slightly.
“I told her I would.”
I swallowed.
“But you couldn’t stay awake every night.”
“No.”
He smiled sadly.
“So I found another way.”
“The lights.”
“The lights.”
He looked toward the bedroom.
“She passed away at 4:17 in the morning.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“She was holding my hand,” he continued. “The lights were on.”
He paused.
“She wasn’t afraid.”
I looked down.
Daniel’s fingers tightened around his coffee cup.
“After the funeral, I tried turning them off.”
“And?”
“I couldn’t.”
“Why?”
He looked directly at me.
“Because every time I turned one off, I imagined her waking up and looking for me.”
My eyes filled with tears.
“I know that sounds foolish.”
“No,” I whispered.
“It sounds foolish to other people.”
“No.”
He looked toward the window.
“That’s why I can’t turn them off.”
For the first time, I understood.
The light wasn’t for Daniel.
It was for Elena.
Or maybe it was for the promise he had made to her.
