The city went dark at 8:14 p.m., and every window became a mirror.

From her balcony, Iris watched the buildings blink out one by one. Then she noticed a candle burning across the courtyard, in the apartment that had been empty since spring.

Someone stood behind it, still as a photograph.

Iris lifted her phone flashlight. The figure lifted a hand in answer. She should have been frightened. Instead, a memory stirred: a note slipped under her door during the worst week of her life, a paper cup of soup left on the landing, a voice through the wall saying, “You don’t have to answer. I just wanted you to know you’re not alone.”

She had never seen the neighbour clearly. Only heard him through the wall, always at the exact moment she was trying not to cry.

Now she crossed the courtyard with a candle in a glass jar. The building smelled of wet concrete and someone’s dinner. She knocked once.

The door opened. A man in a white shirt looked at her with a tenderness that made her forget her prepared introduction.

“You’re real,” she said.

He laughed softly. “I was going to say the same thing.”

His name was Sam. He had been away caring for his mother and had returned that afternoon. He had left the candle in the window because he remembered Iris once saying that the dark made an apartment feel like a place no one would notice if you disappeared.

They sat on the floor, close enough for their shoulders to touch. The lights returned, but neither moved to switch them on.

Then Sam said, “There’s a reason I knew what you said that night.”

Iris looked at him. “What night?”

He reached for a small recorder on the shelf. “The night you called for help.”