The complaint was written in careful capitals. My mother cannot use these steps, it began. Beneath it, in the reply box, someone wrote: I will walk with her until it is fixed.
The official repair record named no volunteer. When Marta found the form among her late mother's papers, she recognized the reply as her father's handwriting. He was not yet part of the family when the complaint was filed. Their first walks together began as a temporary solution to a broken handrail.
A photograph dated months later showed the repaired rail and both parents standing beside it. The assistance had outlasted the fault. Marta had heard a more romantic account involving a dance, but the dates did not require choosing one meeting as the only beginning.
She gave a copy of the complaint to the local archive with permission to display the personal reply. The handrail had been replaced several times since. What survived on paper was not the metalwork but a sentence written by someone willing to make an inconvenient route easier for another person, before either knew where those walks would lead.