The Stranger at the Window

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Ruth moved into the apartment on the twelfth floor in November, six weeks after her mother's funeral. The building was old, and the rooms were full of her mother's furniture, which she had not had the heart to sell. On the third night of the blizzard, while she stood at the window with a cup of tea, she saw him for the first time.

He was standing in a lit window of the building across the street, on the eleventh floor. The snow was falling so heavily that she could only make out a tall, thin figure, perfectly still, with his arms at his sides. She waved, feeling silly. He did not wave back. She closed the curtains and told herself that some people are simply strange.

The next night, he was there again. And the night after that. Always at ten, and always at the same window, always motionless. Ruth began to keep track of him the way one keeps track of a sound in the night. She looked up the building's address online and found the manager's name, but the office was closed on account of the snow, and she lay awake until dawn.

On the fourth night, she decided to test something. She turned off every light in her apartment and stood in the dark, watching. For a moment, nothing happened. Then the stranger slowly raised one hand, and lowered it, as if greeting somebody. Ruth stepped back from the glass, her heart pounding. He could see her; he had been able to see her all along.

She thought about calling the police, but she could already imagine the dispatcher's weary voice: a man is standing in a window. Instead, she put on her coat and her boots, and went down the twelve flights of stairs. Outside, the wind was so fierce that she had to walk with her head bent. The door of the opposite building was unlocked, and its elevator smelled of old paper and pipe smoke.

On the eleventh floor, she knocked on the door of apartment 11C before she lost her courage. There was a long wait. Then the door was opened by a very old man, in a cardigan, with snow-white hair. He looked at her, and his eyes filled with tears. "You have her face," he said. "I'm so sorry to have frightened you, Ruth. I'm Mr. Haddad."

He led her to a small room, made her a cup of tea, and explained. For twenty years, every night at ten, he and Ruth's mother had waved to each other across the street, from window to window, like two lighthouses. It had started as a joke and had gradually become a habit. "Before she died, I promised her that I would keep watching," he said. "When I saw your light come on the first night, I felt that she was back. I have stood there every evening since, just to see that light, but I never knew how to say hello."

Ruth looked out of his window, across the snow, at her own lit window on the twelfth floor. She felt the knot in her chest loosen. "Next time," she said, "you can wave first." Mr. Haddad smiled, and for the first time in weeks, Ruth smiled back.