Through the Window Across the Street”

It started as a study of light.

Every evening, when the sun began to dip below the buildings and the glass turned to gold, Daniel sat by his window with a sketchbook on his lap. His tiny apartment was on the fifth floor, directly across from another building that looked almost identical — gray bricks, rusting fire escapes, and rows of tired windows that caught and fractured the dying sunlight.

But it was her window that kept him there.

At first, she was only a silhouette framed by the lace curtain — a woman with hair that shimmered auburn in the sunset. She always seemed to be painting. He could tell by the way her arm moved: steady, deliberate, sometimes pausing midair like she was considering a stroke only she could see.

Daniel was a painter too. Or he had been. Lately, the canvases around his apartment stared back at him blank and accusing. But when he watched her — the grace of her gestures, the quiet concentration — something in him began to stir again.

He told himself it was harmless. He wasn’t spying, just observing life as artists do. The woman across the street became his muse, his spark. He began sketching her every evening — the slope of her shoulder, the way her head tilted toward the light, even the delicate shape of her hands when she lifted a brush.

She never looked out the window. Never noticed him.

And that made it easier.

By the third week, Daniel had filled an entire notebook with drawings of her. He named them Study of Evening Woman, Muse in Windowlight, Self in Reflection.

He painted her on canvas, too — blending colors until the warmth of her apartment seemed to glow from within the frame. He painted her surrounded by flowers, by light, by life — everything his own space lacked.

Then one night, she wasn’t there.

Daniel stared at the empty window long after the light faded. The curtain hung still, untouched. Maybe she was away. Maybe she’d gone to visit someone.

But the next evening, and the next after that, her window remained dark.

Something hollow began to bloom in his chest.

A week passed. Then two. The curtain never moved again.

Daniel told himself he was being ridiculous. People had lives — jobs, friends, families. Maybe she’d just moved. Still, he found himself pacing by his own window, glancing across the street every hour as though she might reappear, as though her return might fill the silence pressing against his ribs.

He couldn’t paint anymore. The colors looked wrong. The canvases mocked him again — as empty as her window.

On the tenth night of her absence, a storm rolled in. The city lights blurred through the rain, and Daniel sat in darkness, listening to the rhythmic tapping on the glass. His gaze drifted, as it always did, across the street.

And that’s when he saw it.

For the briefest moment — lightning flashed, and in the window, she was there.

Her face was pale, eyes wide, as though she were looking right at him. Then the light was gone.

Daniel barely slept. The next morning, he decided he had to know.

He crossed the street, feeling foolish but desperate. The building’s lobby was dim and smelled of dust. A man in a maintenance uniform looked up from a toolbox near the stairs.

“Excuse me,” Daniel said. “There’s a woman who lives on the fifth floor, across from me. Red hair, paints by her window?”

The man frowned. “Fifth floor? That apartment’s empty.”

“No, it’s not,” Daniel insisted. “I’ve seen her every evening for weeks.”

The maintenance worker shook his head. “It’s been empty since… well, since the accident. Year and a half ago, I think. Woman lived there alone. Painter, if I recall. Fire broke out — faulty wiring. She didn’t make it.”

Daniel’s throat went dry. “That’s impossible,” he whispered. “I saw her. Just last night.”

The man gave him a look — half concern, half discomfort — and went back to his tools.

Daniel stumbled out into the street, rain slicking his hair to his forehead. He looked up at the window — her window. It was still. No curtain moving, no light within. Just an empty room reflecting the gray sky.

That night, he didn’t go to bed. He set up his easel by the window again. The canvas before him was blank, white as bone.

He began to paint her — every curve of her face, every gleam of light in her hair, exactly as he remembered. His brush moved with feverish energy, guided not by thought but by something deeper, almost magnetic.

Hours passed. The city outside grew quiet.

When he finished, he stepped back. The painting was perfect. She looked alive.

Too alive.

Because in the reflection of his own window, he saw her standing behind him.

He turned sharply — the room was empty. Only the whisper of the wind outside.

But when he looked back at the painting, her eyes were no longer gazing out toward the horizon. They were looking directly at him.

A faint warmth spread through the apartment, the kind he used to feel when he watched her across the street. He smiled — not in fear, but in recognition.

For the first time in months, Daniel felt inspired. He dipped his brush in crimson and whispered,

“Welcome home.”