The door was open. That was the saddest part.
Not locked, not broken, not blocked by anything reasonable — just open, swinging slightly in the cross-breeze, as if someone had left in a hurry or was planning to come back soon.
No one was coming back.
She stood in the doorway for a long time, not going in, not quite leaving. Just standing at the threshold. That, it turned out, was something you could do — stand between things. Stay in the space that belongs to neither side.
She didn’t know yet if that made her brave or stuck. She suspected it was the same thing, seen from different angles.