Everyone in our building called her the “angry neighbor.” She lived alone, rarely smiled, and people avoided her because they thought she might start an argument at any moment.
After she passed away, police asked me to join them when they checked her apartment. I’d lived in the building longer than anyone else, but nothing prepared me for what I found inside: shelves filled with neatly labeled boxes, one for each neighbor.
The box with my name held drawings I’d slipped under her door as a child, little notes I’d written, and a newspaper clipping from when I won a school award. Other boxes contained birthday flyers, community photos, and lost belongings she had kept safe.
We had mistaken her silence for bitterness. I left her apartment in tears, wishing I’d taken the time to know the woman who had quietly held on to so many of our memories.
