Meet me at forty-seven, the letter said. The writer died before the meeting, and his grandson Jules kept returning to the landing marked forty-seven as if the place might explain the unfinished invitation.
A resident noticed him studying the steps and asked which year's numbering he used. An added flight had shifted every marker above the bend. In the year of the letter, forty-seven stood beside a broad stone where two people could sit without blocking the path.
Jules found the old numbering plan in a works file. At the correct landing, he could see the window of the workshop where his grandfather had spent most of his life. The invitation still did not say what he wanted to discuss, but its setting became less arbitrary.
Jules sat until the workshop lights came on. He resisted writing a speech for the man who never delivered one. Instead, he photographed the view and recorded how the landing was identified. The place could be recovered with evidence. The words that might have been spoken there belonged to a different kind of absence.