My grandfather died a year ago, and every morning since then, I run into him. He's not really my grandfather, but he could be; they're identical.

The first day I saw him, I almost rushed to hug him and tell him how much I miss him. He wears a gray jacket and carries the newspaper under his arm. Just like my grandfather. I watch him cross the street every day, and every day I make sure he doesn't trip. Not on my watch. Just like I used to do with him. My non-grandfather is now part of my routine.

One day I thought about following him, getting closer to him, finding out what my non-grandfather does during his day. Slowly, shuffling his feet, he would enter the corner bar. He would sit where the air conditioning was just enough to keep him cool but not so much as to catch a cold, and he would order a coffee with boiling milk in a glass mug and two toasted churros. Just like my grandfather.

Then, my non-grandfather would turn the newspaper pages, wetting his finger. He would call the waiters by name and pay in cash from an old wallet. And I would watch him with tearful eyes and wait. I wouldn't be able to speak. And then a lady covered in jewelry, who looks nothing like my grandmother, would come and kiss him. And I would stand up and shout and reproach him that we were waiting for him. And he wouldn't understand anything because that grandfather isn't my grandfather, even if he looks like him.

Every morning, I let him cross the street. Telling him he looks like my grandfather and scaring him would be losing him a second time.

Audrey points the key at the lock. The nicks around the keyhole tell other stories: nights that ended badly, keys that wouldn't turn, hands that trembled for reasons she preferred not to remember. Today is no easier. Several attempts, clumsy fingers, her mind elsewhere.

She walks slowly to the stairwell, leans over, and gazes at the infinite descent into her duties and obligations.

She can't stop thinking about Holly. Yesterday, she was diagnosed with an illness, and Audrey's heart broke. She tried to explain it to her boss, but her contract didn't cover absences for that reason. Again, she looks at the stairs. She only sees duties and obligations. A whole life of steps to descend because she has to, because it's what's expected of her, because that's how the world works. Then, in a moment of clarity and defiance, she turns towards the door—that door which has suddenly become a responsibility—and without aiming, inserts the key quickly and naturally. As if her body knew before her mind.

She manages to silence the demons. As she opens it, Holly is mere millimeters from her, her snout cold, her tail wagging wildly, oblivious to any diagnosis. Audrey kneels, hugs her, and for the first time that day, truly breathes. Now it's time to attend to the jewel in the crown.

The circle of greenish stems occupied the center of the shelf. Not because that object was the most striking or the most expensive, but because it had been born from her fierce childish will. She kept it in a matchbox wrapped in an old handkerchief. Inside lay two thin, twisted stems she had found one November morning while walking through the forest. She had intertwined them while her grandmother picked thyme and told her that there are trees that communicate underground.

Jana was convinced that the pendant was important. When she finished it, she hung it around her neck. The stems were cold and smelled of damp. The box shared a shelf with her other treasures: the keychain her aunt had brought her from New York, a drawing given to her by Lucía, and a crumpled zoo ticket.

But that ornament was special. The other objects had come to her already made. This piece, however, had started as a living element. It had grown in the forest for years before she discovered it among wet leaves. Jana remembered the exact moment: the wind was moving the branches, and she knelt down to touch the stems. She felt a curious, almost adult joy, as if she had found something that was waiting for her.

With the months, the small creation began to change. The stems darkened and lost their earthy scent. When she opened the box, Jana found vegetable dust inside. She then understood that her jewel was also growing old. And that, instead of making her sad, intrigued her. Because important things don't always last. Sometimes they only exist for a small, exact time, like mushrooms after the rain or her grandmother's hand warming the back of her neck as they walk through the forest.

September has taken away the dry heat, and with the desired cool of the evening, Grandma Enriqueta sits on the stoop of the entrance and chats with the neighbors.

Through the window of the room that Anna and I have shared every summer of our lives, light conversations filter in, which we follow with little interest, until we hear someone announce the headline of the night: that the girl from Can Vila is now with the mayor's son; she's the crown jewel, they say. The gentle wind stops, the leaves stop, the line of ants stops, even the airplane in the sky stops. Everything but my sister's tears, which start to trickle down her cheeks. "She's something else, aunt, it hasn't even been a week since we broke up," she says. She's Audrey Hepburn embracing a soaking wet cat in the rain in Breakfast at Tiffany's, but the zero-kilometer version.

Down in the street, the conversation continues. "She's not a jewel, she's a pearl," declares Grandma Enriqueta, who has just placed herself on the podium of grandmas. "Jewels are something else," she continues, and with an automatic gesture, she touches the cameo pendant resting on her chest. "A jewel holds time, it's the memory of the instant when everything fits, without tricks or doubts, like true love, like the earth that sustains you even when you don't bloom." In the room, our Audrey wipes her tears with a crumpled Kleenex and asks me if I think we'll ever find someone who loves us as much as Grandma Enriqueta has been loved, and I gesture with my gaze towards the stoop of the entrance.