Margen
On the staircase of my building, the echo never added up. I discovered it the week the hallway light burned out: I was climbing in the dark, counting steps, and when I stopped on the landing there came one footstep more. Just one. Polite, almost discreet, like someone stopping half a second late so as not to give themselves away.
I ran the tests anyone would run: climbing slowly, stopping dead, taking off my shoes. The extra step always came, always just one. Over the years I stopped testing. Some things you simply live with: a leak, a hinge, a step.
Eighteen years in that flat. I climbed with groceries, with prams, with boxes from other people's moves, with bad news that weighed more than the boxes. The echo always one too many, punctual, faithful in its way.
On moving day I carried down the last box, the one with the mugs, and went up one more time to look at the empty flat. I counted my steps out of habit.
They came out exact.
I closed the door slowly, just in case, and from the hallway below I thought I heard, very softly, a single step upstairs, staying.