Watched From Here
She unpacked the kitchen boxes first. The tape gun screamed each time she pulled a strip, and the sound bounced off bare walls she hadn't learned yet. Glasses in the upper cabinet, plates below, the chipped mug with the faded 'W' near the back where she wouldn't have to look at it.
The box cutter caught her thumb on the third box. She tasted copper before she saw the blood, sucked it clean, kept going.
By four o'clock the kitchen was done and the rest of the apartment was still cardboard and plastic wrap. She'd brought the tape measure to check whether her bookshelf would fit against the east wall. It wouldn't. She stood there holding the dumb yellow tongue of it, letting it retract with a snap.
The living room window faced south. Across the street, behind a row of street maples just starting to turn, her old building sat with its fire escapes and its cracked stucco and unit 3B's curtains she recognized because she'd picked them out at Target four years ago.
She hadn't expected to be able to see it from here. The listing photos were all aimed the other direction, toward the park.
The notebook was behind the radiator. She found it because the tape measure slipped out of her hand and clattered down between the wall and the iron ribs, and when she knelt to fish it out her fingers touched a spiral binding instead.
Mead Five Star, college-ruled, the green cover warped from heat. She almost tossed it on the pile of stuff the last tenant had left — a bent curtain rod, some Command hooks, a phone charger with a frayed cord. But the first page had handwriting on it, small and even, and she read the top line before she decided to.
Oct 4. Woman in 3B across the street. Came home at 6:40 carrying two grocery bags, paper not plastic. Left the hall light on until 11.
Maren set the tape measure down on the windowsill.
Oct 11. 3B. Didn't come home until after 9. No grocery bags. Turned on the TV — could see the blue light. Turned it off around midnight, then the bathroom light stayed on another twenty minutes.
Oct 14. 3B brought a friend over, shorter woman with dark hair. They sat near the window for a while. The friend left at 10. 3B stood at the sink for a long time after.
Oct 19. 3B. Grocery day again. One bag this time. She peeled an onion at the kitchen counter and threw half of it away.
She'd thrown half an onion away in October. She had. A recipe that called for half and she'd been too tired to wrap the rest.
Maren closed the notebook. Opened it again. Flipped ahead — twenty, thirty pages of the same handwriting. Dates running from October through March. All of them about 3B. All of them about the woman in the window.
Her hands were steady. Then they weren't.
Her phone buzzed on the kitchen counter. She flinched hard enough to drop the notebook.
She answered without checking the screen.
No. Yeah. Almost done.
Liar. Okay, I'm coming over tomorrow with wine and that shelf liner you like and we're finishing this. No arguments. What's the new place like? Can you see the park?
Maren looked at the window. The maples. The fire escapes.
Yeah. You can see the park.
After Saskia hung up, Maren stood in the kitchen with the phone warm against her thigh. The notebook was on the floor by the radiator where she'd dropped it, open to a page near the middle. From here she could read one line in the small, even handwriting: 3B hasn't watered her plants in eight days.
The hall closet door was stuck — she'd tried it earlier and it hadn't opened. Paint, maybe. Sealed shut a long time ago.
A light came on in a second-floor unit across the street, and she stepped back from the window before she understood why.
She found Gil's number on the move-in packet, second page, under a clip-art graphic of a wrench. She dialed before she could talk herself into waiting until morning.
He picked up on the fourth ring. Television noise behind him, something with a laugh track.
Yep, this is Gil.
Hi. I just moved into 4C. I had a question about the previous tenant.
The laugh track cut out. He'd muted it.
Fine. The person who lived here before me — did they leave a forwarding address or anything?
A pause. She heard him shift — chair creak, maybe a hand going to his neck.
Man or woman?
The silence lasted three seconds. She counted.
You know, I handle a lot of units. Thirty-six in this building alone. I want to say — listen, is there something wrong with the apartment? Because if there's a maintenance issue I can have someone up there tomorrow.
They left some stuff behind. A charger, a curtain rod. A notebook.
Oh sure, people leave all kinds of things. I can send someone to grab it if it's in your way. That hall closet sticks too, I know — I've been meaning to get to that. But really, 4C is a gem. You're going to be very comfortable there.
Thanks, Gil.
She hung up. Sticks, he'd said. The closet door sticks. She'd tried it earlier and it was painted shut — not swollen wood, not a bad latch. Three coats of paint feathered over the seam.
The notebook was where she'd dropped it, open to the middle page. She picked it up and brought it to the kitchen counter. Not the window. She wasn't going to stand where they'd stood.
She flipped past the entries she'd already read, past October, into November. The handwriting stayed the same — small, even, unhurried. Someone with a steady hand and nowhere to be.
Nov 3. 3B. Home at 5:15, early for her. Stood at the window talking on the phone for twenty minutes. Kept touching her hair.
She did that. She did that when she was on the phone with her mother.
Nov 12. 3B. Sat on the couch from 6 to past 7. No TV, no lights. Got up and closed the curtains.
A car alarm went off somewhere below, two sharp yelps and then nothing. Maren turned the page.
Nov 20. 3B. Two bags, paper. Put them on the counter and left them there. Went to the bedroom. Bags still there an hour later.
Dec 22. 3B put up a small Christmas tree in the window. Tabletop size. Turned the lights off at 8 which is early for 3B.
Her father's diagnosis had come four days before that. She'd bought the tree at CVS because the apartment felt like a waiting room and she thought it might help.
She closed the notebook and put her hand flat on the cover. The green cardboard was soft, almost fuzzy, from months pressed against the radiator. She could feel the spiral wire under her palm.
Across the street, 3B was dark. Her old curtains hung still. Someone else lived behind them now, or no one did — she hadn't asked the old building manager, hadn't wanted to know.
She realized she was standing at the window. She'd crossed the room without deciding to.
She started with the bathroom. Medicine cabinet empty, toilet tank lid lifted and set on the tile — nothing. Bobby pin in the vanity drawer, brown, bent open. She moved on.
The bedroom closet took longer. She ran her hands along the top shelf, fingertips dragging through dust, and found a thumbtack and a rubber band. The closet smelled like cedar and something stale underneath. She stood in it with the door open and her arms at her sides for a while.
Kitchen drawers were empty. She checked behind the refrigerator and under the sink. The living room had nothing except the stuff she'd already catalogued — the curtain rod, the Command hooks, the frayed charger. She pulled the radiator away from the wall to see if anything else had fallen behind it. Just dust and a dead roach, legs up.
The bedroom dresser was built in, three drawers that stuck on humidity. She yanked each one out fully, checked the underside. First two, nothing. Third drawer, bottom one, her fingers caught on tape. A Polaroid, face down, fixed to the underside of the drawer with a single strip of packing tape gone yellow.
The photo was overexposed, shot from this window or one near it. Her old building across the street, the fire escapes, the third floor. Unit 3B's kitchen window. A figure at the counter, blurred by distance and the cheap lens, but standing the way Maren stood — one hip against the cabinet, weight on the left foot. The light in the photo was the flat gray of a weekday morning.
She put the photo in her back pocket.
She retrieved the notebook from the kitchen counter and brought it to the mattress on the bedroom floor. She'd been sleeping there without a frame — the bed wasn't coming until Thursday. The fitted sheet kept popping off the corner nearest the wall, and she'd given up fixing it. She sat cross-legged with her back against the wall and opened to where she'd left off.
Jan 6. She came home with a new coat. Dark green. Left the tags on the kitchen counter.
Maren's thumb pressed a dent into the margin of the page.
Jan 15. She left early. 6:20. Came back at 4 with a man — older, gray hair, moved slow. They sat in the living room. He left at 7. She stood at the window after.
Her father. The first visit after he'd started treatment. She didn't remember standing at the window, but the rest of it was right — the time, the gray hair, the way he moved.
A pipe knocked somewhere in the wall. She turned the page.
Jan 22. She didn't come home.
Jan 23. Lights on at 2 PM. Curtains stayed closed all day.
Feb 2. She rearranged the living room. Moved the couch to the other wall. Took her about an hour. Kept stopping to look at her phone.
She had no memory of rearranging the living room. She'd lived there — she knew the couch had moved at some point, she could picture it against both walls — but the day, the hour, the stopping to check her phone. Nothing.
Feb 14. I almost left a note in her mailbox. I didn't.
Maren read it again. Read it a third time. The handwriting was the same — small, even, unhurried. But the sentence sat differently than every entry before it.
Feb 20. She had the friend over again. Dark hair. They drank wine at the kitchen table. The friend talks with her hands.
Feb 27. Grocery day. Three bags. She's eating more. That's good.
That's good. Two words in someone else's handwriting and Maren closed the notebook hard enough to bend the cover back. She put it on the floor beside the mattress and pulled her knees up.
Someone knocked on the front door. Three knocks, unhurried, knuckles not fist. Nine-thirty at night.
She crossed the apartment in socks. Looked through the peephole. Gil, in a flannel shirt untucked over khakis, holding a plastic bag.
She opened the door but kept her hand on it.
Hey, sorry, I know it's late. I was thinking about what you said — the stuff left behind. I brought a bag, figured I'd grab it so it's out of your hair.
Now?
He rubbed the back of his neck with his free hand.
The charger and the curtain rod.
And whatever else. The notebook, the hooks — I'll take all of it. Clean slate for you.
She hadn't mentioned the notebook tonight. She'd mentioned it yesterday, on the phone. He'd listed it back to her now alongside the hooks like they were the same kind of thing.
I threw the notebook away.
Gil's smile held.
She hadn't said sinister.
I didn't say sinister.
His hand found his neck again, higher this time, almost at the base of his skull.
She let him in. He collected the curtain rod, the Command hooks, and the frayed charger from the pile by the door. He moved through the apartment without looking around, which meant he already knew the layout or he was being careful not to seem interested. He put everything in the plastic bag and cinched it.
He paused at the door.
It's painted shut, Gil.
Right. Well. We'll get it sorted. Night now.
She closed the door. Put the chain on — first time she'd used it since moving in. Stood with her forehead against the door and listened to his footsteps in the stairwell until they were gone.
The notebook was in the bedroom, on the floor beside the mattress. The Polaroid was in her back pocket, pressing against her when she sat. She pulled it out and looked at it again — the blurred figure, the gray morning light, the kitchen window she'd stood at a thousand times without knowing she was framed in it.
She put the photo between the pages of the notebook, at the Feb 14 entry, and carried both to bed.
Across the room, the window gave her 3B's dark face. She didn't get up to look.
She found his office in the basement, past the laundry room and the meter bank. The door was open. Gil sat behind a metal desk eating a hard-boiled egg off a paper towel, a portable radio playing something with horns.
He saw the notebook first. His whole body went still — not the fidgeting, not the neck-rub, just a man caught mid-chew with nowhere to put what was in his mouth.
She set the notebook on his desk, next to the egg.
She'd pulled the name from the tenant directory taped inside the lobby mailbox panel — 4C had a crossed-out entry she'd barely registered on move-in day. Three letters.
Gil swallowed. His fingers tore a strip off the paper towel, slow and deliberate.
The notebook.
A lie. The notebook never used a name — just '3B,' then 'she,' then 'I.' But Gil didn't know what was in it. Or maybe he did, and that's why he was tearing the paper towel into smaller and smaller strips, his fingers working without his permission.
I thought you threw it away.
I lied.
The boiler cycled on behind the wall. Gil reached over and turned the radio off.
He leaned back in the chair. Didn't look at her. Looked at the notebook on his desk like it was a thing he'd have to deal with.
Woman.
Gil tore another strip.
You wouldn't tell me that on the phone.
No.
Maren pulled the folding chair from against the wall and sat. She didn't ask. The chair's metal legs scraped concrete and Gil flinched at the sound.
You read it.
His fingers stopped on the paper towel.
Enough.
He nodded once. Then he put both hands flat on the desk, on either side of the notebook, like he was bracing.
And you left it there.
I put it back. Yeah. I put it back where I found it. I don't — I'm not proud of that. I should've thrown it out. I should've done a lot of things.
The closet.
Gil's hands pressed harder against the desk.
What about it.
You painted it shut yourself.
The boiler cut off.
Maren's hands went to the arms of the folding chair.
Two more.
Gil stood up. The chair hit the wall behind him. He walked to the far side of the small office, three steps, and stood facing the cinder block with his back to her.
It's not over. I'm in the notebook, Gil.
He turned around. He looked tired in a way that went past the hour.
I know.
You knew when I called. You knew when you rented me this apartment.
He rubbed his face with both hands, hard, the way you'd try to wake up from something.
Where is she now.
I don't know. No forwarding. She gave thirty days' notice and moved out clean. I never saw a moving truck. Just one day the keys were in my mailbox with a note that said thanks.
A note.
Just 'thanks.' One word. I kept it for a while. Threw it out.
Maren reached across the desk and picked up the notebook. Gil watched her take it back but didn't move to stop her.
I want the closet open tonight.
Gil leaned against the cinder block wall. He had a sponge on the edge of his desk, the yellow kind, blackened on one side and curling at the corners. He picked it up and put it down again.
Tonight, Gil.
She left through the basement fire door into the building's back stairwell and took the steps two at a time. Fourth-floor landing. Her keys were already in her hand.
The chain was on. She'd put the chain on after Gil's visit last night and hadn't taken it off when she left — walked out through the stairwell door without thinking. Her body making decisions her mind hadn't caught up to.
She stood on the landing with her key in a lock that wouldn't matter. The notebook pressed against her ribs where she held it. Below her in the stairwell, Gil's footsteps started climbing.
She sat down on the concrete landing with her back against the chained door. Gil's footsteps were maybe two flights below, steady, not rushing.
She opened the notebook under the stairwell's caged fluorescent and flipped past the entries she knew. Past February. Past the grocery bags and the rearranged couch and the note that was never left in her mailbox. March.
Mar 3. She left the bathroom light on all night. Second time this week.
Mar 8. She didn't come home.
Mar 9. Lights on at noon. Yellow curtains open. She stood at the window drinking coffee and didn't move for a long time.
Gil's footsteps reached the third-floor landing. He stopped there. She could hear him breathing.
Mar 14. 3B is on the listings. Saw it this morning. Two-bedroom, third floor, available April 1.
The watcher had gone back to '3B.' After months of 'she,' after 'I almost left a note' — back to the unit number. Maren's thumb found the edge of the page and held it.
Mar 19. Gave my thirty days today.
Mar 21. I took the listing down. Reposted it somewhere she'd see it.
Maren's hand stopped on the page. She didn't turn it. The fluorescent above her buzzed at a frequency she could feel in her teeth.
Not the 3B listing. The 4C listing. Noa's apartment. Noa had taken down her own listing and reposted it — where? On whatever site Maren used. Whatever app she checked at night when she couldn't sleep, scrolling through apartments she couldn't afford, looking for a reason to leave the place where her father had sat on her couch and moved slow.
Gil's footsteps started again. Third floor to fourth. Slow.
Mar 23. She scheduled a showing. I watched her walk into the building. My building. She looked up at the fourth floor. I don't know if she was looking at me but she was looking at me.
That was the last entry. The rest of the pages were blank.
Gil came around the landing. He had a paint scraper in one hand and a ring of keys in the other. He stood at the top of the stairs and looked at her on the floor with the notebook open in her lap.
She sent me the listing.
Gil set the paint scraper down on the railing.
She gave notice before you signed. I didn't know why until — I didn't know.
You didn't think about it.
I thought she found a better place. People leave. That's what people do in this building, they leave.
Maren closed the notebook.
Open my door.
He did. He had a master key and a chain tool, a flat piece of metal that slid through the gap and lifted the chain off its track. Took him four seconds. He'd done it before.
The apartment was dark. Her boxes, her mattress on the floor, the window. All of it arranged by someone she'd never met.
The closet.
Gil picked up the paint scraper. He walked to the hall closet and worked the blade along the seam, three coats of paint cracking in a line. Paint chips fell on the hardwood in small curls.
He pulled the door open. It stuck, then gave with a sound like a seal breaking.
Two notebooks on the shelf. A blue one with a water stain along the spine. A black one, pristine, the cover still glossy. Both Mead Five Star. Both spiral-bound.
Gil stepped back. His hands hung at his sides. He stood completely still, which was worse than the fidgeting.
I'll be in the basement if you need anything.
Gil.
He stopped in the doorway.
If she contacts you. If she calls, or comes back for these. You tell me first.
He nodded once and left. She listened to him go — down the hall, into the stairwell, the door closing behind him with its fire-rated click.
She took the blue notebook off the shelf. It was heavier than the green one, more pages filled. The water stain had warped the cover so it didn't sit flat. She opened it to the first page.
Jun 12. New apartment. 4C. Fourth floor, south-facing. There is a woman across the street in 3B. She has yellow curtains.
Maren carried the blue notebook and the black notebook to the kitchen counter. She set them next to the green one. Three notebooks in a row, spines facing her. Blue, green, black. June through March.
She picked up her phone and called Saskia.
Saskia picked up on the second ring. There was music behind her, and the clatter of dishes being put away.
Hey! I was literally just thinking about you. Did you get the shelf liner yet because I found this amazing one at — wait, are you okay? You sound weird.
When you used to come over. To 3B. Did you ever notice someone watching from across the street.
The dishes stopped.
What?
Fourth floor. The building I'm in now. Did you ever see anyone in the window.
Maren, what is this about. Why are you asking me about — no. No, I never noticed anyone watching. I wasn't exactly scanning the building across the street when I came over. What's going on.
Maren's fingers found the edge of the counter.
The person who lived here before me kept notebooks. Three of them. She watched my apartment for ten months and wrote down everything she saw.
Saskia didn't say anything.
She knew when I went to bed. She knew about Dad's first visit after the diagnosis.
Okay. Okay okay okay. Have you called the police? Maren, this is — you need to call the police.
There's an entry about you.
Nothing from Saskia's end. Not even breathing.
October 14. 'Shorter woman with dark hair. They ate on the couch and the friend stayed until eleven.'
That could be anyone.
It's not anyone.
Why haven't you called the police.
Maren opened her mouth and closed it. She looked at the three notebooks on the counter. Blue, green, black.
She moved out so I'd move in.
What does that mean.
She found my listing search. Reposted her apartment where I'd see it. She gave notice before I even signed the lease.
Maren. That is — do you hear yourself? That's not someone who cared about you, that's someone who was, like — there's a difference. Please tell me you know the difference.
I didn't say she cared about me.
You didn't have to.
Maren pulled the phone away from her ear. She could hear Saskia still talking, tinny and far away, the words running together. She put the phone back.
— staying there tonight? Maren? Are you staying in that apartment tonight?
Yeah.
I'm coming over.
Don't.
She could hear Saskia's keys already, the jangle of them being swept off a table.
Saskia. I need to read the rest of them. I can't do that with you here.
Why not.
Maren didn't answer. The keys stopped jangling.
You don't want me to see what's in them.
I don't want anyone to see what's in them.
They're not yours, Maren. They're about you. That's not the same thing.
I'll call you tomorrow.
If you don't call me by nine I'm coming over and I'm bringing a locksmith and I'm not kidding.
Okay.
Maren.
Yeah.
Lock the door.
She hung up. The apartment was quiet. She put the phone face-down on the counter.
She picked up the black notebook. It was lighter than the other two, the spine uncreased. She opened it.
The first page was blank. The second page was blank. The third page had one line, undated, in handwriting so compressed the letters nearly touched.
She read it standing at the counter with her coat still on and the chain off the door and every light in the apartment burning.
She read it again. Then she put the notebook in her bag with the other two, pulled the bag over her shoulder, and left.
She stood on the sidewalk across the street with the bag over her shoulder and looked up at 4C.
Ceiling. That's all she could see. The angle from the street gave her the top of the window frame and a strip of plaster and nothing else. No counter, no mattress, no notebooks on any surface. You couldn't see in from down here.
She turned around. 3B was right there — third floor, yellow curtains, dark window. The kitchen, half the living room, the top of the bookshelf she'd left because it was too heavy to move. You could see everything.
Her phone buzzed. Saskia. She let it ring.
She walked back across the street and into the building and up four flights of stairs to the apartment.
The door was how she'd left it. Unlocked. Every light on. She stepped inside and the hallway smelled like paint dust from the closet, that dry chemical smell that would take days to clear.
She set the bag on the floor by the mattress. Still zipped. The three notebooks pressed against each other inside it, spines she could feel through the canvas.
The closet stood open. Empty shelf, bare rod, paint chips on the hardwood where Gil had scraped.
She went to the kitchen. The frayed phone charger was gone, the curtain rod was gone, the Command hooks were gone — Gil had taken all of it. What was left of Noa in this apartment was the paint dust, the notebooks in the bag, and a dent in the wall behind the radiator where the green notebook had sat long enough to leave a mark.
She put the chain on the door. Then she took it off. Put it on again. Stood with her hand on the metal and her forehead against the wood.
She left the chain off.
She took out her phone and typed a text to Saskia. One word. Home. Sent it.
She turned off the lights, one by one, until the apartment was dark. The hallway. The bathroom. The kitchen. The bedroom last. She lay down on the mattress with the bag on the floor beside her and the open closet breathing its paint-dust air down the hall.
She closed her eyes. It was 11:47.