Every evening in her small stationery shop, Dunja set aside a newspaper for the locksmith across the road. His name was Nedim. He had a wife and a habit of fixing her jammed drawer before she even asked. Dunja had lived alone for years. She had not planned to fall in love with his arrival before closing time.
She told him nothing. Their conversations stayed brief, about the weather, customers and the books he left on the counter. Still, she knew how often she looked toward the door. When he did not come one Friday, she felt a worry she could no longer call ordinary concern for a neighbor.
His wife Aida came for the newspaper on Monday. She said Nedim was in hospital. Dunja offered to keep an eye on the workshop for a few days. Aida accepted, tired and grateful. Because of her own feelings, Dunja almost withdrew the offer, as though help became dishonest the moment it carried more than one reason.
Nedim did not return. After his death, Dunja continued closing the shop at the same time but lingered beside the newspaper shelf. Once, she admitted her feelings to a friend. She received stern advice to stop thinking about another woman's husband. As though a thought could be set aside with an unsold magazine and no longer belong to you the next day.
For months, she kept a photograph from a neighborhood street celebration between two books. All the shopkeepers stood in it, but her eyes always found Nedim. She did not display it. She feared doing so would take away someone's right to something she had never even claimed. Meanwhile, she began resenting Aida for laughing while speaking to a new neighbor.
One day, Aida came in for a cardboard box. She was selling the workshop and moving closer to her sister. Against her own intention, Dunja said she was glad Aida was moving on so quickly. Aida looked at her without anger. "Quickly from the outside," she said. "At night, it isn't quick." Dunja immediately wished she could take the sentence back.
Instead of making excuses, she admitted missing Nedim and feeling more affection than she had shown. Aida was silent for a long time. She said she had not known and needed a moment, but also that she could not preserve his memory by ceasing to live. Dunja understood how unfair it was to turn another woman into the guardian of her own hidden grief.
On moving day, she gave Aida the photograph, having first made a copy with her agreement. She placed her own behind the counter, uncropped, with all the neighbors. She still sometimes looked at Nedim. But now she noticed herself too, smiling among people who had shared a street and many ordinary days. She remembered to give the next customer their change.