The old man was reading her book.

She noticed it on the Rambla del Poblenou—the battered yellow cover, the dog-eared corner she'd folded herself at page 47 because she'd run out of bookmarks that day in the airport, three years ago. She'd sold the copy to a second-hand shop on Carrer dels Tallers when she moved flats. She remembered this the way you remember forgetting to water a plant.

He read with his whole face. His lips moved faintly. Not a man who'd learned to hide his reactions.

She sat down on the bench beside him, one space between them, the polite distance that says I am not speaking to you. The morning smelled of salt and somebody's breakfast pastry. A pigeon investigated the space between their feet.

On page 47, there is a woman standing at the window of a train. She is watching a man on a platform who does not know she is watching him. The story ends before the train moves.

Excuse me, Elena said, in Spanish. Then: Is that any good?

He looked up. Eighty, perhaps. Eyes pale as sea glass. He considered the question seriously, the way you'd consider a doctor's question.

There is a story in here, he said, about a woman on a train. I have read it four times.

Does it change?

He thought about this. No. But I do.

She didn't tell him she'd written it. Some things, once you say them, become smaller. She wanted it to stay the size it was—his four readings, his changed self, the pigeon, the salt air, the distance she had not closed between them.

I'll let you finish, she said, and stood.

He nodded once, already returning to the page.

She walked back toward the Gothic Quarter with the particular feeling of having been somewhere she could not quite name. Not nostalgia—something more immediate. As if a version of herself had been handed gently back to her by a stranger who hadn't known he was holding it.

At home, she opened a new document. She typed: The old man was reading her book.

She stopped. She stared at the line.

That's the whole story, she thought. Everything else is just proof.

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