Elena bought a large sheet of transparent drafting film from an art supply store.

  At her apartment, she pinned one of her father’s maps to the wall and taped the city’s official zoning map over it.

  Then she turned on the lamp and stepped back.

  The two cities aligned imperfectly.

  Street grids overlapped in places, diverged in others. Blocks shifted subtly, as if one city had exhaled while the other held its breath.

  But what struck her most was not what had been added.

  It was what had been softened.

  Highways in the real city carved through neighborhoods with confidence. On the phantom map, they narrowed to slender lines. In some versions, they dissolved entirely, replaced by tram routes or walking paths.

  Parking lots became courtyards.

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  Strip malls became open-air markets.

  Dead-end streets opened into shared green space.

  The phantom city had more pauses.

  More interruptions of speed.

  More places to sit.

  She counted the benches in a single quadrant of the map.

  Seventeen.

  In the real city, she could think of three.

  It was not nostalgia he had been drawing.

  It was revision.

  Not a return to the past — but an argument with it.

  She overlaid the February 1979 map.

  The Crossing was marked not as an intersection, but as a small pedestrian bridge arcing over the river that did not exist.

  A footbridge.

  Gentler than asphalt.

  She wondered if that had been Mira’s addition.

  If she had been the one who insisted on water where there was only concrete.

  If he had narrowed the highway later in apology.

  Elena stepped closer to the wall.

  In later maps — the 1990s, the early 2000s — the southern edge of the city grew more detailed. Small annotations appeared near the Crossing: a bench, a stand of trees, a shaded area labeled rest.

  As if he had tried to build shelter around an impact.

  She removed the official zoning map and stood alone with the phantom city.

  It did not feel unreal.

  It felt aspirational.

  Like a draft of something kinder.

  For the first time, she considered that the maps were not only about Mira.

  They were about repair.

  Not of the past.

  Of the structure that had allowed the past to happen.

  She sat at the desk and took out the final map.

  Dated three days before his death.

  The southern edge was quieter now. Fewer annotations. The river narrower. The footbridge thinner but still present.

  In the margin, beside the word Continue, he had drawn a small circle.

  Empty.

  A placeholder.

  For something not yet decided.

  Elena touched the circle lightly with her finger.

  She did not yet know whether it was an invitation.

  Or a burden.