The address was just a string of text in an old file: Tvaikonu Str. 5, LV1007, Riga, Latvia . No context. No date. Just a location.
She folded the paper slowly, walked to the Daugava River, and threw it in. It sank immediately, like lead.
She pushed the front door. It groaned open. tvaikonu str. 5, lv1007, riga, latvia
Marta checked her phone. No signal. Not low bars—zero. The air smelled of river silt and coal smoke, though the last coal plant shut down a decade ago.
The date of the first mass Soviet deportation from the Baltic states. June 14, 1941. The address was just a string of text
She spun toward the door. It was gone. In its place, a mirror. In the mirror, she saw the room behind her—but different. No wallpaper decay. No dust. The nine people were there now, standing quietly, dressed in coats and worn shoes, suitcases at their feet. A woman with her grandmother’s face—same cheekbones, same tired eyes—stepped forward and whispered in old Latvian:
That night, she dreamed of a train. Wooden carriages. Endless tracks. And at the very back, a woman with her face waving goodbye. No date
Tvaikonu iela was a ghost of a street. Sandwiched between a new glass office tower and a vacant lot of weeds and rusted rebar, Number 5 was a building that shouldn't exist. It was a pre-war wooden tenement, leaning into its own decay like a tired old man. The paint was the color of a bruise. The windows, where they still had glass, reflected nothing.