From the August 2025 issue of Deb’s Quill
Nora
The apartment reeked of someone else’s life: the mustiness of an old carpet and a lingering trace of garlic in the cupboards. Nora scrubbed everything down until the air sparkled with the scent of lemon.
And her teenage son, Jamie, puttied the wall holes left by pictures long gone. They’d hang their own and make the apartment theirs.
She filled it with boxes, hers and Jamie’s, from their lives pre-divorce. Each box unpacked — the dishes her mother had gifted, Jamie’s baby shoes, her albums full of their old lives — reminded her why they’d come. To start a new life out of the dregs of the old.
Outside, snow blanketed the sidewalk, erasing the city’s grime. Across the street, the old firehall—a community centre now—stood guard. Its windows glowed with life during the day. Even now, though the city slept, the upstairs window stayed lit.
A man stood in that window, watching the street, a pencil in one hand, sketch pad in the other. She caught his eye. He nodded, didn’t smile, and looked away.
Jamie decided to visit the firehall the second day. “Gotta check it out,” he said. “They’re doing something for Gaza. Posters and stuff.” He grabbed a sandwich, ate as he danced out of their apartment. “Maybe a protest march. That would be so cool.”
Protests were dangerous. She wanted to warn him away, but she didn’t want to be a smothering mother. He was on his way to becoming a man, and she refused to hold him back.
When he disappeared beyond her sight, her eyes flicked up to the window across the street. The man stood, still and silent, watching her. He raised a hand, holding a coffee mug—in greeting or invitation, she wasn’t sure.
Liam
Liam didn’t notice the woman across the way at first. His attention was still on Shirrin as she organized the protestors, handed out blank posters, markers and the wooden posts to mount them on. Following her movements was a ritual now, borne of a love they’d shared too many years ago.
She’d moved on to a life of politics and stability — until Gaza. The atrocities happening daily on the other side of the planet had renewed the activism spark she’d buried when she’d left him. And brought her here, to his turf, to this haven for the discontented and the hopeful.
He no longer believed chants and banners would change the world but she was here, the part of his past he clung to, as if his world would be okay as long as she skirted its edges.
Shirrin didn’t recognize him—or pretended not to. He could live with that. He would keep the lights on, fix the furnace, scrub graffiti off the walls and paint murals in its place. And stay hidden from view, content to hover at the edges of her orbit.
But then the woman across the street caught his eye. Nora.
Her son, Jamie, was all fire, raw and twitchy as only a teenager can be. The boy reminded him of the hunger for justice he’d once believed in. The kid had to learn how to channel that hunger, but Shirrin was an excellent guide.
A knock, soft, tentative. Nora stood outside, coffee mug in hand. “I thought it was time to say hello,” she said, her eyes clear but guarded.
He liked her immediately. “Come in.” He held the door open. She slid past him. “I can offer you toast, if that suits?”
She nodded. They sat, ate rye toast coated in peanut butter and jelly. Talked about pipes and murals and what it meant to care about something when cameras were absent.
“I saw the wall painting of the sparrows,” she said. “You drew that?”
“With left over paint.” A blush crept up his neck. “To cover graffiti.”
She smiled. “Well, it’s beautiful.”
Nora
Jamie came home, buzzing. “My sign’s on Instagram,” he said, holding it out for her to read. “It’s getting likes.”
Kids Deserve to Live. She read the words, in his unrestrained printing, and remembered the food drive he’d organized when he was ten, and socks-for-the-homeless, last year.
“I’m proud of you,” she said, and pulled him in for a hug. Jaime believed in people, in causes and justice. She’d never believed in anything, or anyone, except Jamie. Maybe that’s why her marriage fizzled.
When Jamie buried himself in his tablet, she grew restless. So she crossed the street again, and found Liam upstairs, sketching.
She roamed the room, studying his art. Pictures of a woman, familiar, Arabic, beautiful, covered his walls. “You love her?” she asked, studying him.
He shrugged. “I used to.”
“Not now? She’s the woman downstairs, isn’t she? The one organizing the protests.”
“She is. Shirrin.” He hesitated. “But no, I don’t love her anymore. She’s a memory now. More a habit than anything else.” He glanced away. “I used to share her passion for causes.” He looked back, eyes hooded. “I don’t anymore.”
“My son does. It scares me.”
He poured more coffee. “Jamie will be fine. Shirrin won’t let anything happen to him. Neither will I.”
Liam
Once, accidentally, he’d glanced through her window and saw her sleeping. On her couch, one arm slung over her head, a book on her chest, her face smooth, worry-free, peaceful. He’d grabbed his sketch book, drew her as she slept, planned a portrait.
Shirrin had never been that calm. The woman he remembered was a restless ball of energy: up at dawn, firing off letters, organizing marches, rallying half the city by lunch—and then doing it all again in the afternoon.
He’d thrived in her orbit, for a while, as young and restless as her. He’d sketched her, the busy work, the marches, the arrests—his art covering their walls, then piled on tables and chairs—until he kept repeating the scenes. Bored, tired of protests that accomplished nothing, he stopped drawing.
That’s when Shirrin stopped caring. Coincidence? He didn’t know. But he’d been blindsided when their affair ended. The hurt stayed for a long time, like an infected tooth he couldn’t pull. But no longer.
Now he wanted stillness. Like Nora, who joined him for coffee and quiet chats, who watched her son but let him find his own way, who slept like there was no turmoil in the world.
Nora
Jamie was injured at the next protest, pushed down by a pro-Israeli supporter. And a reporter caught it on camera. Her son, the media star, loved the attention.
Nora stormed up to Liam’s door, eyes flashing, fists balled. “They shoved him,” she railed. “He’s sixteen.”
He nodded. “He’ll be okay.” He offered her coffee and toast, giving her time to settle. “I tended him. It was just minor cuts and bruises. He’s fine.”
He’d fix everything for her if he could. But she and Jamie didn’t need fixing, so he’d help the only way he could. By listening.
Nora
She’d barely noticed when her husband left. Didn’t cry. He’d walked out the door one afternoon and she’d picked up her book, continued reading like it was any other day.
But she’d wept today when Jamie came home for the second time with scraped knees, and proudly declared, “I’m not backing down.”
When she stopped crying, she pulled herself together. She wouldn’t be the woman who only reacted. She wanted her son to be proud of her. She marched across the street, determined.
Liam opened his door. She brushed past him, edgy. “I want to help. Be involved. Do something.”
“Protest?” he asked.
“Yes. No.” She plopped down on a chair. “Maybe. But I’m a coward. Not Jamie—.” She choked back a sob, swallowed hard. “He admires Shirrin. You know?”
He did. He’d been Jamie. “You don’t need to be her. You’re Jamie’s mom. Be you.”
She sniffled. Nodded. “Still …”
“Still,” he agreed, and understood her need. “How about this. Start small.” He handed her a paintbrush. “I could use help covering graffiti from yesterday’s protest. Are you game?”
Liam
They started on the graffiti, Feed the Children, together.
“I feel a bit guilty painting over this,” she said. “What they’re doing—starving a whole country into submission—it’s wrong.”
“They’re calling it genocide,” he said, frowning. “How can people be so cruel?”
“So evil,” she whispered, the sigh heavy on her heart.
“So evil,” he echoed, and felt a need to comfort her.
Nora bit her lip, focused on careful brushstrokes: precise, straight lines, overlapping the bare minimum, as if precision would keep this tiny corner of her world safe.
He studied her as they worked, drawing her in his mind to paint later.
He grinned for the first time in forever—and dabbed her nose with his brush.
She laughed, splashed his chin with hers—but her strokes loosened, became stronger, less precise, more playful. And she started to hum, under her breath at first, but then out loud.
He started singing a song from his youth. Michael Row Your Boat Ashore. She joined in, delighting him.
That night, he drew the picture from his mind. Nora, painting and laughing, hair up in a messy bun, sleeves pushed up to her elbows, white paint on her nose.
He taped the sketch on his window for her to see.
And pulled down all the pictures of Shirrin from his walls.
Nora
She saw it, in a glance as she passed by her kitchen window. His vision of her— young, joyful, happy — touched her.
She carried her notebook with her when she knocked on his door. “I used to write,” she said, when he glanced at it. “A long time ago.”
They sat by his window. She wrote. He drew. They talked. Sirens blared in the distance. Snow fell, blanketing the city and muffling the sound of people in the street. They kept each other company until the light faded.
Liam
He didn’t tell her she saved him—from his memories, from his empty life. Instead, he painted his feelings into pictures of her and lined his walls with them. When she passed them each time she visited, emotion flickered in her eyes.
Nora
Jamie stood taller now. Being a part of something big, of the protests, was turning him into the man she’d hoped he’d become. A man with courage, integrity, and a thirst for justice. All the traits his father lacked. Traits she lacked but wanted to work toward.
And Liam?
He’d saved her, helped her look outside herself, to engage. She didn’t tell him. Her feelings were too new, too fragile. But she slept with the blinds open, inviting him to watch her as she watched him.
She began to write again. For him. For herself. About windows. And seeing. For standing up for what’s right. And about quiet men who paint and the shy women who knock on their doors.
The End
© Deborah Sarty. All rights reserved. This story may not be reproduced without permission.
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