No one noticed the boarded-up building at the edge of Marrow Street until it un-boarded itself.
It had sat there for years — a husk of brick and dust and old posters curling at the corners, a place people passed without really seeing. It wasn’t dangerous or interesting enough to attract attention. It was just… forgotten.
Then one morning, the boards were gone.
Nothing dramatic had happened. No construction trucks. No loud renovations or men in helmets shouting into phones. It simply stood there, as if it had always been open — a tall, narrow window framed in pale wood, clean and reflective, glowing faintly like the surface of a calm lake.
People walked past it at first, just as they always had.
Except one.
Nate stopped.
Not because he was particularly observant — he wasn’t. He usually walked with his head full and his eyes unfocused. But something in the air around the building tugged at him, like the soft pull of a familiar voice.
He slowed.
Then stopped completely.
The window wasn’t showing inside the building.
It was showing something else entirely.
Inside the glass was a kitchen.
Not any kitchen.
His kitchen.
The one that no longer existed except in photographs and dreams.
His childhood kitchen, with the crooked cabinet door above the sink and the blue tile his mother had insisted on even though it clashed with everything. The chipped mug he drank hot chocolate from when he pretended to be grown. The small round table where no one ever fit properly but everyone squeezed in anyway.
His stomach dropped.
“Okay,” he muttered. “That’s not normal.”
He stepped closer.
The glass carried warmth, not cold. Like standing near an oven that had just been turned off.
Inside the window, his mother stood at the stove.
Not ghostly.
Not faded.
Just… present.
Humming a song he hadn’t heard in years.
Nate’s breath stuttered.
“She’s gone,” he whispered to the empty street. “I was there. I held her hand.”
Inside the glass, her head tilted, as if she could hear him.
She turned.
She smiled.
And Nate felt something break open in him like an egg cracked by light.
“You’re not real,” he said hoarsely.
Inside the window, she raised an eyebrow — exactly the way she used to when he said something stubborn.
He blinked, tears rising.
“Are you… a memory?” he asked.
She reached out — not through the glass, not to touch, but to place her palm on the other side in the exact spot his hand found.
Warm.
Not solid, but not empty.
Just… there.
“You’re not dead in here,” he whispered.
Her lips moved, though he heard nothing.
He pressed his forehead to the glass.
The world around him blurred. People walked past, glancing at him briefly, then continuing. No one else stopped. No one else saw what he saw.
Not even the girl across the street, who stared through the window and frowned.
“What are you looking at?” she called.
Nate looked back at the glass.
To her, it showed only an empty room.
Dust.
Nothing.
He swallowed.
“Nothing,” he said quietly.
But it wasn’t nothing.
It was everything he thought he had lost.
He came back the next day.
And the next.
Sometimes the window showed his old living room, with the cracked couch and the dent in the wall that his father refused to fix.
Sometimes the hallway with the picture frames he used to race past.
Sometimes his room — the one that smelled faintly of crayons and dust and old books.
Each time, it wasn’t frozen.
It moved.
His mother washed dishes.
His father read the paper.
His younger self ran laughing down the hall, unaware that he was a ghost in someone else’s aching present.
Other people began to notice the window too.
Not what it showed — but that something about it made people linger.
A woman named Rosa sat nearby for hours one afternoon.
“Do you see something?” Nate asked cautiously.
She hesitated, then nodded.
“Yes,” she said.
“What?” he whispered.
“My grandmother’s garden,” Rosa replied, eyes glossy. “The one that got sold when she passed. The fig tree. The wind chimes. I thought I’d lost it.”
Another man came one evening, silent at first.
He simply sat on the curb and wept.
When Nate asked, he said, “My apartment from when my daughter was still little. Before the divorce. Before everything changed.”
Word didn’t spread like a rumor.
It spread like a whisper.
Only the ones who needed it heard.
“What is this place?” Nate finally asked the reflection one afternoon.
His mother, inside the glass, dried her hands and looked at him with the old familiar tenderness — the kind that never felt heavy, only solid.
He imagined her voice, because that’s where voices live when they’re no longer physically in the air:
This is where lost homes go, she would have said.
Not destroyed ones. Just the ones that couldn’t stay where they were.
“Is it… heaven?” he asked aloud.
She smiled softly.
Not heaven.
She shook her head.
His chest hurt.
“Where then?”
In his mind, her voice answered:
A waiting room. For hearts that aren’t ready to let go yet.
He started bringing coffee.
Not for her, obviously.
Just for himself.
He would sit on the pavement, back leaning against the opposite wall, watching the life he thought had ended continue gently inside the glass.
Not stuck.
Not mourning.
Just existing.
Not forever.
Just until he could finally stop needing it.
And that realization surprised him.
One day, he noticed something different.
His younger self inside the window wasn’t twelve anymore.
He looked older.
His face more like his current one.
“You’re changing,” Nate whispered.
His mother nodded.
So are you.
He swallowed.
“I’m scared if you disappear,” he admitted. “I won’t remember you the right way.”
She smiled in that way she always did — kind, a little amused, never panicked.
You won’t forget me, she would have said.
Because I’m not in there.
She tapped the glass lightly.
Her finger left no mark.
Then, in Nate’s chest, a warmth settled.
I’m here.
Days passed.
Weeks.
The window began showing less.
Fewer details.
Fainter colors.
Nate’s visits grew shorter.
Not because he cared less.
But because something inside him felt… settled.
Whole in a new, unfamiliar way.
One afternoon, he arrived to find a boy standing in front of the glass.
A teenager with red eyes and a backpack slung too loosely.
“You see it too?” the boy asked quietly.
The boy didn’t look inside.
He stared at the reflection of himself.
“Yeah,” Nate replied gently.
“What do you see?” the boy asked.
Nate thought.
Then he answered honestly.
“Home,” he said.
The boy nodded, relieved somehow.
“Me too,” he whispered.
The next time Nate came, the window was gone.
Boarded again.
Just brick.
Just silence.
Just ordinary.
His chest tightened for a moment.
Then softened.
Because he realized something:
Home hadn’t disappeared.
It had just moved.
Not into glass.
Not into memory.
But into the way he now carried it differently.
He didn’t feel anymore like his past had been stolen.
He felt like it had been… given back.
Not to relive.
But to keep.
He walked away from the building slowly.
Not looking back.
And for the first time in a long time, when he thought of his mother, he smiled before he cried.