My neighbor asked me to stop waving back to his d@ughter.
I moved into a small basement apartment last summer.
Quiet street. Mostly older couples. The kind of place where nothing really happens.
Across from my unit’s side entrance there was another house with a narrow kitchen window facing the driveway. Every night when I came home from work around 10:30, I’d see a little girl standing in that window.
She couldn’t have been older than maybe seven.
First night I noticed her, she waved.
So I waved back.
After that, it became a routine.
Every night I’d pull into the driveway, grab my bag, and she’d already be there waiting at the window.
Sometimes she waved.
Sometimes she just watched.
But she was always there.
Always standing in the same spot.
Always in the dark kitchen with just the light above the sink on behind her.
After about two weeks of this, I mentioned it to my landlord while he was fixing the fence.
I said something like:
“Your neighbor has a kid who stays up late.”
He looked confused.
“What kid?”
I pointed at the house.
“The girl in the kitchen window. She waves every night.”
He stared at the house for a few seconds longer than normal.
Then said:
“They don’t have kids.”
I laughed because I thought he was joking.
But he didn’t laugh back.
Instead he said:
“They’re an older couple. Been there twenty years.”
That night when I got home, I almost expected the window to be empty.
It wasn’t.
She was there again.
Standing in the same spot.
Watching me park.
This time she didn’t wave.
She just stared at me.
So I waved first.
Slowly.
She didn’t move.
Didn’t blink.
Didn’t smile.
Just stared.
That’s when something else hit me.
In the two weeks I’d been seeing her there, I had never once seen her during the day.
Only at night.
Only in that window.
Always standing in the same spot.
The next afternoon I knocked on the neighbor’s door.
An older man answered.
I told him I lived next door and asked if his daughter kept appearing at the window at night because it was starting to worry me a little.
He didn’t say anything right away.
Just stared at me.
Then he said:
“We don’t have a daughter.”
Same thing my landlord said.
Same exact sentence.
I apologized and started explaining what I’d been seeing every night.
He interrupted me halfway through.
Not angry. Not confused. Just very quiet.
He said: