We lived on the third floor of an old brick building, but my world often revolved around the mysterious eighth. That was where she lived. The woman. Everyone whispered about her.
My parents would pull me closer, their voices dropping to a hush when her name, or rather, the lack of one, came up. “She’s… unwell,” my mother would say, her eyes darting away. “Best to leave her be.” My father would simply grumble, “Trouble.”
But I was a child, full of an insatiable curiosity that parental warnings only fueled. I saw her sometimes, a fleeting shadow at her window, or the briefest glimpse of a pale face peering from behind her half-open door when I was sent on an errand to the communal laundry room on the floor below. She looked sad. So incredibly sad. My young heart, still unburdened by cynicism, just wanted to make her smile.
A sign outside a building | Source: Pexels
I started small. A crayon drawing of a bright yellow sun, taped to her door. No response. The next day, a wobbly blue bird. Nothing. My parents were oblivious, thankfully. My secret mission unfolded in the quiet hours after school, before dinner. I’d take the slow, creaking elevator up, heart thrumming against my ribs, convinced I was a hero on a vital quest.
Then, one afternoon, I slipped a drawing of our building, full of cheerful stick figures, under her door. This time, when I returned the next day, it was gone. In its place, a small, polished stone, smooth and grey, like a worry stone, sat on the mat. My breath caught. She saw it. She liked it.
A silent conversation began. I’d leave a drawing – a flower, a smiling cat, a fantastical creature – and she’d leave a small token: a pressed leaf, a tiny, intricately carved wooden bird, a faded, silken ribbon. Each exchange felt like a breath of life, a secret language only we understood. I felt a profound connection to her, a sense of purpose. I was making a difference. I was saving a lonely heart.
My parents noticed my newfound preoccupation, my quiet trips to the eighth floor. “Still playing up there?” my father asked one evening, a hint of steel in his voice. “Don’t bother her. She wants her privacy.” My mother, though, looked at me with a strange, almost pained expression. She knows I’m helping her, I thought. She just can’t say it.
A restroom sign on the wall | Source: Unsplash
I started feeling like she understood me better than anyone. My drawings became more complex, tiny windows into my own childhood anxieties and dreams. I imagined her, alone in her quiet apartment, finding solace in my innocent scrawls. I pictured her smiling, a soft, rare smile that only my art could evoke. I told myself I was her only friend, her only link to the outside world. This conviction fueled me. It made me feel important, powerful.
Years passed. The drawings turned into small, hand-written notes, then printed poems. The tokens she left grew more personal – a silver locket with no picture, a tiny porcelain doll missing an arm. They felt like fragments of a life, bits of herself she was slowly trusting me with. I never saw her full face, never heard her voice, but I felt her presence, a quiet warmth emanating from behind that door, a reciprocation of the connection I offered.
My connection to her was a lifeline, not just for her, but for me. It was a secret world where I was brave and compassionate. It was pure.
Then came the summer I turned twelve. I was feeling bolder, less like a child. I decided I would finally speak to her, introduce myself properly. I wrote a long letter, pouring out my heart, telling her how much her friendship meant to me, how I cherished our secret bond. I confessed that she made me feel like I truly belonged, that I truly mattered. I ended it with a promise to knock the next day.
I never got the chance.
A senior woman holding a goblet and smiling | Source: Pexels
That evening, a distant wail of sirens pierced the quiet apartment complex. My mother rushed to the window, her face pale. “Eighth floor,” she whispered, her voice barely audible. My blood ran cold.
I ran out of our apartment, propelled by a terrible dread, ignoring my parents’ shouts. The elevator was out of service, so I flew up the stairs, two at a time, my lungs burning. When I reached the eighth floor, my secret world had exploded. The door to her apartment was wide open. Uniformed figures moved inside, their faces grim. A medical stretcher was being wheeled out.
And on it, covered by a white sheet, was a slight form.
My eyes fixated on the small, pale hand hanging limply from beneath the sheet. Around its wrist, barely visible, was a familiar, faded, silken ribbon. It was the one she’d left for me years ago.
I wanted to scream, to ask what happened, to demand to see her, my friend, my secret confidante. But a different sound made me freeze. It was my mother’s voice, from behind me, sharp and terrified.
“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?” she shrieked. But she wasn’t yelling at me.
She was yelling at my father. He stood there, frozen, his face ashen, staring at the stretcher.
“You knew!” she cried, her voice cracking, tears streaming down her face. “You knew she was still suffering! All these years… why didn’t you let her go?”
A woman drinking a glass of wine | Source: Pexels
My father finally moved, pulling my mother into a tight embrace, burying her face in his shoulder. He whispered words I couldn’t quite make out, but one phrase cut through the air, clear as a bell, striking me like a physical blow.
“I had to protect you. She was never well after… after what we did.”
What we did? The words echoed in the sudden silence. My parents, who had always seemed so perfect, so infallible, standing there, shattered.
Then I saw it. A glint of metal on the floor, near the open door of her apartment. It was the silver locket. The one with no picture, the one she’d given me. I bent down, my fingers trembling as I picked it up. It felt heavy, cold.
And then I saw the faint inscription, almost worn away, on the back. A date. And three initials. My mother’s initials.
And another date, just a few years later. And my father’s initials.
My vision blurred. It couldn’t be. It felt like the entire building was spinning. The woman on the eighth floor… the lonely heart I thought I saved…
A woman wearing a warm coat | Source: Unsplash
I remember the medical personnel looking at my parents with pity, then at me with a strange sorrow. I remember my mother’s inconsolable sobs, my father’s haunted eyes.
It was only later, weeks later, after moving to a new apartment, a new city, that the pieces finally clicked together, told to me in hushed, tearful admissions from my grandmother.
The woman on the eighth floor wasn’t just “unwell.” She was my mother’s older sister.
MY AUNT.
She had suffered a devastating mental breakdown decades ago, after a traumatic event that involved a significant financial betrayal by my parents. They had taken everything from her, ruined her trust, stripped her of her security, and then, to escape the shame and consequences, they had moved her into that apartment, isolated her, and told everyone she was “unwell,” cutting her off from the world, and from her only family.
My childhood drawings hadn’t saved a lonely heart.
They had simply prolonged its silent suffering, trapped in an isolation imposed by the very people who were supposed to protect me. And by offering her that glimmer of connection, by making her believe there was still a chance for human warmth, I had, unwittingly, led her to confront the unbearable weight of her past.
The confrontation she’d likely had with my parents that very day, sparked by my letter, by my promise, had been too much for her fragile heart to bear.
I wasn’t a hero. I was a child, manipulated by my parents’ lies, an unwitting participant in their cruelty. My innocent attempts at kindness had led to her final, heartbreaking end. And my parents? They watched their own sister, my aunt, wither away, just so they could keep their perfect little lie intact.
The lonely heart was indeed saved, in a way. It no longer had to endure. But the cost? My entire childhood. My innocence. My trust in the two people I loved most in the world. And I carry the weight of that last letter, that promise I never kept, every single day.
