Her beloved apartment was a six-floor walk-up in one of the older buildings near the park. The stone masons who toiled to craft the impressive slabs that distinguished it from the nearby structures composed of brick and wood were the same craftsmen who built the grand, sweeping curved drive leading to the marble conservatory across the river. Her great-grandfather was one of them.
"How will I know when I've made it to the top?" she had asked her father once when she was a nine-year-old ballet student dreaming of fame.
She remembered her father's reply. "It isn't important how high you go, Sweetie. What's important is that you live your life so that you can always hold your head high."
Now, years later, she enjoyed nothing more than gazing out from her window over the tops of the row of cherry trees at dusk, admiring the angles and patterns they cast on her small dance studio across the street.
Written for The Mag: Mag 119 that inspired with the above photo prompt (House At Dusk, 1935, Edward Hopper).
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