The Echo in Apartment 3B

Renee didn’t mean to read the letter.

It had been sticking halfway out of her downstairs neighbor’s mailbox for three days. A thin, cream-colored envelope with a red wax seal that looked absurdly dramatic for modern times. Her name—Jocelyn Avery, Apt 3B—was scrawled in old-fashioned cursive.

Renee had passed it each day on her way to and from work, frowning at the way the wax crinkled in the summer heat. By the third morning, she’d convinced herself that it would be a shame to let rain ruin it. She plucked it from the box. Just to knock on Jocelyn’s door. Just to deliver it in person. That was all.

But when she pressed her ear to the door and heard no movement—no music, no coffee grinder, no soft hum of Jocelyn talking to her cat, Binx—she knocked. No answer.

Just a peek, Renee told herself. Just to be sure it wasn’t something urgent.

The letter was handwritten, like something from another century.

“Dearest Jocelyn,

I have searched for the right words for years. If you are reading this, then perhaps fate has given me another chance…”

She didn’t finish. Guilt punched her in the throat. She folded the letter carefully, tucked it back into the envelope, and slipped it under Jocelyn’s door.

And then she heard the sirens.

Jocelyn was taken away in an ambulance an hour later. The super said she’d collapsed in the kitchen, unresponsive. Renee stood by the mailboxes in a panic, watching the flashing lights blur across the lobby. She hadn’t seen Jocelyn in days, and now her heart twisted with the thought that maybe… maybe she’d been in trouble all along.

The letter.

It was from someone named Callum. A name Renee had never heard Jocelyn mention in the eight months they’d lived on the same floor. But it read like something unfinished, like it had sat in a drawer collecting regret.

Maybe it was the reason she collapsed.

And that’s when Renee made her first mistake.

The hospital wouldn’t tell her much. “Only family,” they said. But Renee, persistent as she was, learned that Jocelyn was in stable condition and recovering.

For days, the apartment felt wrong without the muffled music that usually poured from under Jocelyn’s door. Renee paced. Checked her phone obsessively.

She finally Googled the return address on the envelope. It led her to a post office box in Vermont. No phone number. No name.

So she did what any guilt-ridden, overthinking neighbor might do: she mailed a letter of her own.

“To Callum,

I’m not sure if you know this, but Jocelyn collapsed the day your letter arrived. She’s in the hospital. I don’t know what your history is, but whatever you wrote must have mattered.

Maybe you should come.

—Renee (Neighbor, Apt 3A)”

Three days passed. Then five. Then a week.

And then Callum arrived.

He was older than Renee expected—forties, maybe, with pale eyes and a knotted expression that looked like it had been held in place for years. He stood in the lobby holding a bouquet of white peonies, asking the super for directions to 3B.

She stepped forward. “You’re Callum?”

He blinked. “You must be Renee.”

She smiled awkwardly. “I didn’t think you’d come.”

“Didn’t think I’d be welcome.”

He visited the hospital. He stayed for hours. Then returned the next day.

Soon, Jocelyn came home. Her eyes looked clearer. Her music played again.

Callum came and went quietly.

Renee watched it unfold from the hallway, from the elevator, from behind a cracked door. A reunion, soft and tentative.

She had fixed something.

But then came the yelling.

It started one night just after midnight. A crash of glass, a barked apology. Jocelyn’s voice, ragged and sharp. “You don’t get to rewrite it!”

Callum stormed down the hall, eyes glossed over. He passed Renee without looking.

The next morning, Jocelyn knocked on her door. Her cheeks were blotchy. Her smile was forced.

“I know you meant well,” she said, arms crossed tightly over her chest. “But don’t meddle again.”

Renee’s stomach sank. “I—I just thought—”

“You don’t know the whole story.”

She didn’t. She still doesn’t.

Weeks passed. The building returned to its usual quiet rhythm. Jocelyn’s music turned sadder. Slower. Callum didn’t come back.

One rainy evening, Renee heard Binx meowing loudly. It went on for over an hour. She knocked, no answer. The meowing got worse.

She called the super. They opened the door.

Jocelyn was gone.

Not dead. Just… gone. The apartment was cleared out except for a note left on the counter. It was addressed to Callum.

Renee didn’t read it.

She’d learned her lesson.

Still, sometimes she heard the echo of Jocelyn’s music when the hall was quiet. As if Apartment 3B hadn’t forgiven her either.

Then one winter morning, a small envelope appeared outside Renee’s door.

No stamp. Just her name. In the same delicate handwriting she remembered from the first letter.

Inside was a Polaroid: Jocelyn standing on a shoreline, eyes closed, hair wind-whipped, holding Binx like a bundle of light. On the back, just one line:

“Sometimes the wrong people bring the right truth.”

Renee sat with it for a long time. She placed it by her window, beside her plants, where the morning light could hit it.

She didn’t know where Jocelyn had gone, or whether she’d forgiven her. But something about the photo made her think she’d started over. Maybe that was all either of them could do—carry the fracture, let it set in a new shape, and go forward imperfectly.

Renee didn’t fix things anymore. She watered her plants. Played music low. Let the letters in the mailbox be what they were.

But she never again passed someone’s silence without pausing to listen.

Not to fix.

Just to witness