Someone Else Has My View from the Window

How it begins

The woman on the screen had Julia Calder's view.

The room smelled of fresh paint and the coffee she'd carried upstairs. Both belonged to a morning she still considered private.

Not a similar view. The same narrow slice of river, the same crane with one broken warning light, the same pale balcony where someone had been drying a green blanket since Tuesday.

Julia stood at her bedroom window with her phone in her hand.

On the screen, the sunset had already reached the water.

Outside, the sky was still white.

She checked the broadcast time. Live.

The account had no name she recognized and no other posts. Twelve people were watching. Beneath the picture, a small heart floated upward and vanished.

Julia stepped away from her window.

The camera in the broadcast did not move. At the bottom of its frame, just visible beyond the curtain, stood a blue suitcase with a broken handle.

Her suitcase.

She had not taken it down from the wardrobe in eight months.

A knock sounded at the door. Julia nearly dropped the phone.

Mateo Quinn stood in the corridor wearing the maintenance team's gray jacket. He held a work order and a small torch.

"You reported a light flickering?"

She had, yesterday, before the view from her room became something a stranger could watch.

"Can you tell me which other flats face this way?"

Mateo looked past her at the river. "Only yours on this corner. Why?"

She showed him the screen.

He did not offer the reassuring explanation she wanted. He looked at the crane, then at the time, then at the blue case.

"Don't close the app," he said.

Outside, the first real warning light blinked on across the river.

On the screen, a hand entered the frame and reached for the suitcase.

Julia knew the ring on its finger.

She was wearing it.