The Watchful Neighbor

For as long as I could remember, a woman lived on the 8th floor of my building. She had been there for nearly fifty years — longer than most of us had been alive. Always alone. Always quiet. Never smiling. She was the kind of neighbor you passed in the hallway without knowing whether to say hello. Some tried, at first, but she offered only the faintest nod, if anything at all. Eventually, most people stopped trying.

Children whispered about her, calling her “the ghost of the 8th.” Adults were more polite, though no less curious. They speculated in hushed tones about why she never married, why no one ever visited, and why her curtains were always drawn. Some insisted she must be rich and eccentric, others claimed she had once been a dancer or a teacher, but the truth was — none of us really knew her.

Yet, despite her silence, her presence was felt. She was always there, shuffling to the mailbox in her worn slippers, carrying groceries with slow precision, standing by her balcony late at night as if keeping watch over the city. Sometimes, I would catch her gaze fixed on the street below, sharp and unblinking, as though she was seeing something the rest of us could not.

Last month, she passed away. No family came to claim her things. No funeral procession followed. Just a notice slipped under our doors, informing us that apartment 8B was now vacant. It felt unsettling — as if an old tree had been uprooted from the courtyard, leaving behind only an empty patch of earth.

When the workers came to clear out her belongings, they found surprisingly little. A small stack of books. A faded armchair by the window. An old radio. A shoebox filled with photographs of people none of us recognized. The walls were bare, the closets sparse, as if she had spent a lifetime reducing herself to silence and shadows.

Still, in her absence, I began to notice something strange: the building felt different. The halls seemed louder, the air lighter. But also emptier. I realized that for fifty years, she had been our silent witness — the watchful neighbor, always present though rarely acknowledged. And now that she was gone, the building felt less whole.

Sometimes, late at night, I still glance up at her darkened balcony. And though the window is empty, I can’t shake the feeling that she’s still watching.