The Little Thing That Matter

Thursday morning, I woke up in a hurry. I had turned off my alarm and fallen back asleep again, for the umpteenth time. I went to make myself a coffee to drink on the way when my phone started ringing. It was Mom.

-“Make it quick,” I said, pouring my coffee into my pink thermos.

-“Please take Luna out and do the dishes, too. I didn’t have time last night.”

-“Okay, okay.”

I hung up and went to my younger sister Andreea’s room to tell her to take care of everything because I was in a hurry.

I grabbed my jacket, put on my shoes, sprayed some perfume, and picked up my keys. Just as I was about to leave, I heard our neighbor across the hall calling my name.

She was an old woman everyone in the building had something to say about. Ever since her daughter had died many years ago, she had seemed like a different person. Sometimes she talked to herself in the stairwell, and other times she stood outside her door for hours, staring at our apartment.

Andreea and I had given her a nickname: the Bug Lady.

It wasn’t a nickname we had chosen without a reason. Some time earlier, a pipe had burst in her apartment, and Mom had gone inside to help her. When she came back, she told us she had never seen anything like it. There were piles of garbage everywhere, bags, wrappers, and discarded belongings piled on top of one another. There was barely a narrow path through it all, so small that you could only get through by placing one foot in front of the other, carefully, so you wouldn’t trip. And the cockroaches were everywhere. From then on, whenever we saw her in the stairwell, Andreea and I would look at each other and struggle not to laugh.

-“The Bug Lady’s out for a walk,” Andreea would whisper to me. Or, if we heard her talking to herself behind her door, she would send me a message as if she had just discovered something extraordinary. It was our joke. A little thing only the two of us knew about.

That morning, the old woman was holding a small bag.

-“Sweetheart, wait a moment! I remembered you,” she said, holding it out to me. Inside were a few candies and individually wrapped biscuits.

-“For you girls, so you have something sweet.”

I thanked her in a hurry. I was already looking at the time and thinking I was going to miss the bus. The old woman tried to tell me something else, but I politely interrupted her and left. It wasn’t until I reached the corner of the street that I realized I had forgotten to lock the door. I thought about going back, but I was already running late. Andreea was home and was supposed to take Luna out, so I told myself there was no point in going back just for a few seconds.

On my way to university, I sent her a message.

-“Don’t forget to take Luna out and do the dishes.”

Andreea replied with a thumbs-up emoji. I smiled and kept walking. A few minutes later, I remembered the old woman and sent her another message.

“By the way, the Bug Lady stopped me again today to keep me talking and give me sweets. I swear she always stops me whenever I’m in a hurry.” Andreea didn’t reply to that message, but I didn’t think much of it. She was probably still sleepy.

Despite the disastrous morning, I arrived at university on time and didn’t get marked absent. The day should have been fairly easy, but I had a seminar where I had to present a project I had made in PowerPoint and saved on a USB drive.

When the break came, I started looking for my USB drive in my bag. I took out my notebooks, wallet, charger, and almost everything else I had with me, but I couldn’t find it. A classmate suggested that maybe I had put it in my jacket or pants pocket. I searched everywhere, but without success. Maybe I had lost it on the way.

Hoping I had left it at home, I texted Andreea and asked her to check my desk. She didn’t reply. Meanwhile, the professor called us up one by one to present.

-“Do you have your presentation, or am I going to give you a failing mark? And just so you know, you won’t pass my class if you don’t have the project.”

I looked up from my phone.

-“I have it, I just left the USB drive at home.” The professor started laughing.

-“You have no idea how many times I’ve heard that excuse. I’ve been teaching for twenty-seven years. You probably haven’t even bought the USB drive.”

At that moment, my phone vibrated. It was a message from Andreea. She had sent me a photo of the USB drive still plugged into my laptop, with the presentation I had finished the night before open on the screen.

I showed the photo to the professor and, after a few seconds, she agreed to give me another week to present my project.

I breathed a sigh of relief and thanked her. During the next class, I sat with my headphones on, listening to music and waiting for time to pass. At some point, Mom texted me that Dad would be getting home earlier than usual.

I immediately remembered the dishes and Luna. I texted Andreea again, asking if she had done what I had asked her to do. She didn’t reply. I told myself she had probably gone back to sleep. She didn’t have school that day, and she hadn’t been feeling very well that morning.

After my classes ended, I stayed a little longer with two classmates. We talked about ordinary things, laughed, and, for a while, I forgot about everything.

When I left for home, I checked my phone. No messages. I called her. Once. Twice. Three times. Nothing.

I got a little annoyed, convinced she was sleeping so deeply that she couldn’t hear her phone. I told myself I would wake her up when I got home. I had no more than half an hour left until I got there. But the journey took much longer. The bus I was on stopped in the middle of traffic. It was crowded, and people were pushing toward the windows, trying to see what had happened. I opened the transport app and checked the estimated time until my stop. The delay kept increasing by the minute.

After almost twenty minutes, the bus started moving again. On the way, I spotted two damaged cars that were blocking part of the road. I checked my phone one more time. Still nothing from Andreea.

When I got off, I noticed several police cars on the street where our apartment building was. I quickened my pace, curious to find out what had happened. A crowd of neighbors had gathered outside the building, some in their pajamas, others in dressing gowns or work clothes.

Dad was there, too, standing beside his work vehicle.

-“Do you know what happened?” he asked me.

-“No. I’ve just arrived.”

He didn’t answer immediately. He was staring toward the building entrance with an expression I had never seen on his face before.

Then I saw Andreea. She was sitting on the ground among the neighbors, her knees pulled up to her chest. She was crying so hard that she could barely breathe. I rushed toward her, but a police officer stopped me.

-“Please step back!”

-“That’s my sister!”

-“Wait a moment. You need to tell me if you live in the apartment on the third floor.”

-“Yes! What happened? Where is my sister?”

The police officer looked at me for a few seconds.

-“Someone broke into your apartment.”

I felt my stomach tighten.

-“What do you mean, someone broke in?”

-“Your sister was home alone. The door wasn’t locked.”

I looked at Andreea. She lifted her head, and when she saw me, she started crying even harder. I sat down beside her and grabbed her shoulders.

-“What happened? Who came in?”

At first, she couldn’t say anything. She was trembling so badly that I was afraid she might faint. I tried to calm her down, repeating that I was there and that nothing else was going to happen to her.

After a few minutes, she managed to speak.

-“She came into the house…”

-“Who, Andreea?” She closed her eyes and pressed her palms against her ears.

-“The Bug Lady…” I froze.

For a second, I thought I hadn’t heard her correctly. Our nickname, the one we used to whisper to each other while laughing every time we saw her in the stairwell, suddenly sounded completely different.

-“What did she do?” I asked her. Andreea began telling me what had happened between sobs.

She had woken up after hearing the front door. She thought I had come home. When she left her room, she saw the old woman standing in the middle of the hallway, looking around as if she were searching for something.

The old woman had stared at her for a long time before approaching her.

-“Finally, I’ve found you,” she had said. Andreea had tried to explain that she had entered the wrong apartment and needed to leave. But the woman didn’t seem to hear her.

She had grabbed Andreea’s hands and stroked her hair, speaking with a gentleness that frightened her more than if she had been screaming.

-“Why didn’t you come to see me? Why did you leave me alone for so long?”

Andreea had pulled herself free from the woman’s hands and tried to run into my room. The old woman had followed her, calling her by her daughter’s name. That was when my sister started screaming.

The neighbors had heard the screams and knocked on the door. When the old woman saw them, she stopped. Then she left the apartment without saying anything.

The police had found her in her own home, sitting on the edge of her bed and holding an old photograph in her arms. A photograph of her daughter.

I held Andreea against my chest and tried to tell her that everything was over. But as I held her, I remembered that morning. The bag of sweets. The way the old woman had stopped me outside our door. The message I had sent Andreea, joking about her. And, above all, the door I had left unlocked.

That evening, after the police left, I locked the door three times. I checked the handle, then checked it again.

Andreea no longer wanted to stay alone in her room. That night, she slept beside me with the light on.

In the days that followed, the old woman didn’t come out of her apartment anymore. Sometimes, when I walked past her door, I had the impression that I could hear footsteps behind it, even though no one was in the stairwell. I tried not to think about what had happened, but Andreea could no longer sleep alone, and I checked the door every time I came home.

One evening, as I was getting ready for bed, I heard three soft knocks on the door.

I looked at the clock. It was past eleven.

I slowly walked down the hallway and looked through the peephole. There was no one there. I was just about to turn around when I heard a voice on the other side of the door.

-“I know you’re home.” I froze. It was her voice.

I looked through the peephole again. Still no one.

Then I heard her whispering, so close that it seemed as though she had pressed her lips against the door.

-“I don’t want to take her. I just want to see my little girl.”

I took a step back, and the floor creaked beneath my foot.

Silence fell.

A few seconds later, my phone vibrated.

It was a message from Andreea, who was sleeping in my bed, just a few steps away.

“Who’s at the door?” I didn’t have time to reply.

The door handle began to move slowly. Once. Twice. Then it stopped. I stood perfectly still, my phone clenched in my palm, until I heard the old woman’s footsteps fading down the hallway.

The next morning, when I opened the door to leave for university, I found a candy on the doormat.

Beside it was a folded note.

It read: “Tell my daughter that Mommy loves her.”