Lock Every Door Page 9

But when I get downstairs, I find the apartment empty. The door is locked and deadbolted and the chain remains undisturbed. The noise or presence or whatever the hell you want to call it was just my imagination. The foggy remnants of my nightmare.

  Exhausted but too jumpy to go back to sleep, I head to the kitchen to make coffee. Instead of a quick and easy Keurig machine, the apartment has such a high-tech, absurdly complex coffeemaker that I spend several groggy minutes just turning it on. It takes so long that my body is aching for caffeine by the time coffee starts dripping into the pot.

  As it brews, I go back upstairs and shower, trying to shake off the nightmare. God, what a strange, awful dream.

  There have been others, of course. Not long after my parents died. Nightmares about burning beds and thick smoke and internal organs blackened by illness. Some were so wretched that Chloe had to shake me awake because my cries threatened to wake the entire dorm. But none had ever felt so true, so real. Part of me worries that if I look out the window into Central Park, my family will still be there, glowing their way across Bow Bridge.

  So I spend the morning looking at clocks.

  The digital alarm clock in the bedroom as I dress for the day.

  The clock on the microwave as I pour the coffee that has at long last brewed.

  The grandfather clock as I drink said coffee in the sitting room, counting the pairs of eyes in the wallpaper. My tally stands at sixty-four when the clock bongs out the hour. My heart sinks. It’s only nine o’clock.

  When I was laid off, I was presented with a folder of resources. Job-hunting tips and career counselors and information about student loans in case I wanted to go back to school. Everything I needed to face life as someone who was officially unemployed.

  What wasn’t in that folder was advice on what to do with all that sudden free time. Because here’s something else no one understands unless they’ve been there: unemployment is boring. Soul-crushingly so.

  People have no idea how much of their day is taken up by the act of going to work. The getting ready. The commute there. The eight hours at your desk. The commute home. So much time automatically occupied. Take them away and there’s nothing but empty hours stretching before you, waiting to be filled.

  Kill time before it kills you.

  My father told me that, not long after my mother got sick and he lost his job. It was the peak of his short-lived birdhouse phase, when he spent hours in the garage building them for no discernible purpose. When I asked him why he was doing it, he looked up from the pine plank he had been painting and said, “Because I need one thing in my life I can control.”

  It’s a sentiment that makes sense only in hindsight. At age nineteen, I was confused. As an unemployed adult, I get it. Although finding something to control is hard when my whole existence feels as though it’s been hit by a hurricane.

  So I kill time by doing another job search, finding no openings I haven’t seen before. I do a little light cleaning, even though nothing needs it. I empty trash cans that have hardly anything in them and take the bag to the garbage chute, located in a discreet alcove near the stairwell. I drop the bag inside and listen to it slide all the way down to the basement, where it lands with a soft thud.

  Five more seconds wasted.

  When the grandfather clock announces noon’s arrival, I leave the apartment, spotting no one new on the trip to the lobby. Just the usual suspects coming and going. Mr. Leonard and his nurse struggling up the steps and Marianne Duncan and Rufus in the lobby itself, returning from their walk. Today, Marianne wears a seafoam green cape with a matching turban. Rufus sports a red handkerchief.

  “Hello, darling,” Marianne says, adjusting her sunglasses as she swans toward the elevator. “It’s chilly out there today. Isn’t it, Rufus?”

  The dog barks in agreement.

  Since Ingrid’s not there yet, I go to the mailboxes and look to see if anything’s been sent to 12A. It hasn’t.

  I close the mailbox and check my watch.

  Five minutes past noon.

  Ingrid is late.

  When my phone rings in my pocket, I reach for it immediately, thinking it might be her. My stomach tightens when I see who’s really calling.

  Andrew.

  I ignore the call. A second later, a text arrives.

  Please call me.

  It’s followed by a second one.

  Can we just talk?

  Then a third.

  Please????????

  I don’t reply. Andrew doesn’t deserve one. Just like he didn’t deserve me.

  Only now do I understand that we never should have started dating in the first place. We had nothing in common. But Chloe had just started seeing Paul, and I was feeling lonely. Suddenly there was Andrew, the cute janitor I always saw emptying the office trash as I left work each day. Soon I started saying goodbye to him on my way out. Which led to small talk by the elevator. Which led to conversations that seemed to grow longer with each passing day.

  He seemed friendly and smart and just a little bit shy. Plus, his dimples grew more pronounced when he smiled. And he always seemed to be smiling whenever I was around.

  Eventually, he asked me out on a date. I accepted. A natural progression ensued. More dates. Sex. More sex. Moving in together. An unspoken understanding that this was how things were going to be from here on out.

  I couldn’t have been more wrong.

  In the days after I left, my feelings toward Andrew veered from hurt to rage to a sense of feeling abandoned yet again. I hated him for cheating on me. I hated myself for trusting him. After that came another, worse emotion—rejection. Why wasn’t I enough for him? Why wasn’t I enough for anyone? Why do all the people I love keep leaving me?

  I take another glance at my phone. Ingrid is now ten minutes late.

  It occurs to me that maybe I got our meeting location mixed up and that we were supposed to meet in Central Park instead. I picture Ingrid there now, flirting with one of the buskers at the Imagine mosaic and thinking I had ditched her.

  I send a text. Were we supposed to meet in the park?

  When two minutes pass without a response, I decide to walk to the park and see. It seems more sensible than texting again. On my way out of the Bartholomew, I look for Charlie to ask if he saw Ingrid leave the building. Instead, I find one of the other doormen—a smiling older man whose name I’ve yet to learn. He tells me Charlie worked the night shift and called in sick for his shift later today.

  “Family emergency,” he says. “Something to do with his daughter.”

  I thank him and move on, crossing to the park side of the street. It’s more overcast than yesterday, with a slight chill that foreshadows winter’s rapid approach. Definitely not Heather weather.

  Soon I’m in Strawberry Fields, where two buskers strum dueling versions of the song on opposite sides of the Imagine mosaic. Both have gained a few easy-to-please onlookers. Ingrid isn’t among them.

  I check my phone again. Still nothing.

  I move on, heading toward the lake and the bench we occupied yesterday. I take a seat and send another text.

  I’m in the park now. Same bench as yesterday.

  When five more minutes go by without a reply from Ingrid, I send a third text.

  Is everything OK?

  I realize how overly concerned it sounds. But something about the situation doesn’t sit right with me. I think about last night—the scream rising from her apartment, the uncomfortable delay between my knocks and her opening the door, the dark glint in her eyes that seemed to signal something was wrong.

  I tell myself I shouldn’t be worried.

  Yet I am.

  I have Jane’s disappearance to thank for that. The day it happened is notable for how unconcerned we all were at first. She was nineteen and restless and prone to wandering off on her own unannounced. Sometimes she’d
skip dinner without notice and not return until after midnight, smelling of beer and cigarettes consumed in the basement of one friend or another.

  When she failed to come home that night, we all assumed that was the case. We ate dinner without her. We watched some stupid movie about aliens on TV. When my parents went to bed, I stayed up to reread my favorite parts of Heart of a Dreamer. It was, all things considered, a typical night at the Larsen home.

  It wasn’t until dawn the next morning that we realized something was amiss. My father woke up to go to the bathroom. On his way there, he noticed Jane’s bedroom door was still ajar, the room empty, her bed untouched. He woke up my mother and me, asking if we’d heard Jane come home the night before. We hadn’t. After several rounds of awkward, early-morning phone calls to her friends, we finally understood the terrible truth of the situation.

  Jane was missing.

  In fact, she’d been missing since the previous afternoon, and none of us had immediately thought to check on her. When I look back on our initial lack of concern, I can’t help but wonder if Jane would still be here if we had acted sooner or been the least bit worried right away.

  Now I worry too much. In college, I drove Chloe nuts by insisting she check in with me throughout the day. On the rare times when she didn’t, a twinge of anxiety would form in my gut. I feel one there now about Ingrid—a tiny acorn of worry. It expands slightly when I check my phone again and see that it’s now quarter to one.

  I leave the park, worry tugging me back to the Bartholomew. On my way, I send another text simply asking Ingrid to please respond. Again, I know I’m overreacting. I also don’t care.

  Inside the building, I pass Dylan, the other apartment sitter. He’s dressed for a jog in the park. Sweats. Sneakers. Electric guitar screeching from his earbuds. I enter the elevator he just vacated and almost press the top button but instead hit the one for the eleventh floor. I tell myself it won’t hurt to check on Ingrid. I even come up with reasons for why she was a no-show. Maybe she’s sick and not checking her phone. Maybe the battery died and she’s impatiently waiting for it to charge.

  Or maybe—just maybe—my instincts about last night are right and Ingrid was in some kind of trouble but was too scared to talk about it. I close my eyes and recall the flatness of her voice, that plastered-on smile, the way that smile vanished just before she shut the door.

  Once I’m standing outside 11A, I check my phone one last time for a reply from Ingrid. After seeing that there isn’t one, I knock on the door. Two gentle raps. As if this is a casual drop-in and not the product of worry sprouting upward from the pit of my stomach.

  The door swings open.

  Just beyond it stands Leslie Evelyn in another of her Chanel suits. One as red as the wallpaper in 12A. There’s a harried look on her face. A strand of hair has escaped her updo and now curls down her forehead.

  “Jules,” she says, not quite hiding her surprise to see me here. “How’s your arm?”

  I absently touch the bandage hidden under my jacket and blouse. The cut’s so inconsequential that I barely notice it.

  “It’s fine,” I say, glancing over her shoulder into the apartment itself. “Is Ingrid here?”

  “She’s not,” Leslie says with a noticeable sigh.

  “Do you know where she is?”

  “I don’t, sweetie. I’m sorry.”

  “But doesn’t she live here?”

  “She did.”

  I notice her use of the past tense, and my brow furrows.

  “She doesn’t anymore?” I say.

  “That’s correct,” Leslie says with certainty. “Ingrid is gone.”

  13

  Jane is gone.

  That was how my father put it a week after my sister failed to come home. It was almost midnight, and the two of us were alone in the kitchen, my mother having taken to her bed hours earlier. By this point the black Beetle was common knowledge, the police had talked to Jane’s friends, and her picture had appeared on every telephone pole and storefront in the county. My father took a sip of the black coffee he’d been mainlining for days and said, simply and sadly, “Jane is gone.”

  I remember feeling more confused than sad. I still held out hope that Jane would return. At that moment, what I couldn’t understand was why she ever left in the first place. I feel that same confusion now as I watch Leslie swipe the rogue curl of hair back into place.

  “Gone? She’s no longer living here?”

  “She is not,” Leslie says with a disdainful sniff.

  I think of the rules. Ingrid must have broken one. A big one. It’s the only reason I can think of for her sudden, shocking departure.

  “Did she do something wrong?”

  “Not that I’m aware of,” Leslie says. “She wasn’t kicked out, if that’s what you mean.”

  “But Ingrid told me she’d be here for another ten weeks.”

  “She was supposed to be.”

  I’m hit with another kick of confusion. None of this makes sense. “She just left?”

  “That’s right,” Leslie tells me. “Swiftly and without notice, I might add.”

  “Ingrid didn’t even tell you she was leaving?”

  “She did not. And I really would have appreciated some advance notice. Instead, she just slipped out in the middle of the night.”

  “Did anyone see her leave? Who was the doorman on duty?”

  “That would be Charlie,” Leslie says. “But he didn’t see her go.”

  “Why not?”

  “He was in the basement at the time. The security camera down there wasn’t working properly, so he left his station to try to fix it. When he returned, he found the keys for 11A right in the middle of the lobby. That’s where Ingrid dropped them on her way out.”

  “What time was this?”

  “I’m not sure. You’d have to ask Charlie.”

  “Are you certain she’s gone?” I say, thinking out loud. “There’s a chance she accidentally dropped the keys in the lobby and didn’t notice. Maybe there was an emergency with one of her friends and she had to leave in a hurry. She could be on her way back here right now.”

  Although my theory is possible, it’s also improbable. And none of it explains why Ingrid hasn’t texted me back.

  It’s clear Leslie thinks the same thing. She leans against the doorframe and gives me a look brimming with pity. I don’t mind. My parents gave me similar looks after Jane vanished and I’d wake them up with far-fetched theories about where she was and why I was certain she’d return. At seventeen, I was the queen of magical thinking.

  “That seems unlikely, don’t you think?”

  “It does,” I say. “But so does Ingrid leaving in the middle of the night without telling anyone.”

  Leslie tilts her head, the unruly curl on the verge of breaking free again. “Why are you so interested in Ingrid?”

  I could give her several reasons, all of them true. That Ingrid was friendly and fun and I liked being around her. That she reminded me of Jane. That it was a refreshing change of pace to know someone other than Chloe who actually wanted to be around me.

  Instead, I tell Leslie the biggest cause of my concern.

  “I thought I heard a scream last night.”

  Leslie gives an exaggerated blink of surprise. “In 11A?”

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “Around one a.m. I came down to check on Ingrid, but she told me I was just hearing things.”

  “None of the other residents reported hearing anything like that,” Leslie says. “Are you sure it was a scream you heard?”

  “I-I don’t know?”

  It shouldn’t be a question. I either heard a scream or I didn’t. Yet that curl of uncertainty at the end of my sentence means something. It tells me, in its own frustrating way, that maybe what I heard was indeed
all in my head.

  But then why was Ingrid acting so strangely when she came to the door?

  “I’ll ask around to see if anyone else heard something,” Leslie says. “That kind of thing would be noticed in a building as quiet as this one.”

  “I’m just worried about her,” I say, trying to clarify my concern.

  “She left, sweetie,” Leslie says dismissively. “Like a thief in the night. Which was my initial thought, by the way. That she was a thief. That’s why I’m here. I thought for sure I’d find this place completely cleaned out. But everything is still here. Ingrid took only her belongings.”

  “And she didn’t leave anything behind? Nothing to suggest she’ll be back? Or where she went?”

  “Not to my knowledge.” Leslie steps away from the door. “You’re welcome to come in and look.”

  Just beyond the open doorway I see a hallway and sitting room with a view nearly identical to the one in 12A. The room is neat, modern. No red wallpaper with prying eyes here. Just cream-colored walls enhanced with modern art and furnishings straight out of a Crate & Barrel catalog. In fact, the whole apartment has the look of a display. Furnished but uninhabited.

  “Everything’s the way it was when Ingrid moved in,” Leslie says. “So if she did leave anything behind, it would be in the basement storage unit. I haven’t checked there yet because it seems that Ingrid lost the key to it. It’s missing from the key ring Charlie found in the lobby.”

  Which means Ingrid probably never used it. I’ve certainly had no need to visit 12A’s storage unit. All my belongings are in the bedroom closet, which is big enough to hold everything I’ve ever possessed and still have room for more.

  Leslie touches my shoulder and says, “I wouldn’t be too worried about Ingrid. I’m sure there’s a good reason why she left. And, quite frankly, I’d love to hear it.”

  As would I. Because, right now, nothing about this makes sense. A renewed sense of worry clings to me as I climb the stairs to the twelfth floor. Back inside 12A, I crash on the sitting room sofa, my brain clouded by confusion. Why would Ingrid want to leave the Bartholomew? Why would anyone?