Chapter 2
I finish unpacking in Eleanor’s bedroom.
The room feels like her, or at least like the version of her that lives in my imagination. Tasteful, elegant, a little dangerous. A lady with a real edge.
The bed is large, the dark headboard polished to a dull shine. The white sheets look untouched. A silver-framed mirror hangs over the vanity.
I open my suitcase on the bed and start unpacking. Then I cross to the closet and pull it open.
Eleanor's wardrobe hangs in a perfect row. Dark silks, tailored leather. A fur coat at the far end. Pieces that look like they were acquired with intention over decades. I slide them along the rail to make space, then hang my own clothes beside them.
I step back and look at both sides of the closet.
Denim and flannel next to silk and leather. A faded hoodie pressed against a jacket that probably costs more than my monthly rent back home. Two completely different women sharing a rail. I stand there longer than I mean to, studying the sharp contrast. Then I close the closet door.
The nightstand drawer I open mostly out of habit. I scan for a phone charger, a spare key, anything useful and find instead a stack of large photography books.
I pull out the top one and open it. Then I almost close it again.
“Grandma,” I say under my breath.
The photographs are black-and-white. Nude bodies. Masks. Rope. The images are explicit, but not cheap. Beautiful, in a way I don’t want to admit right away. Disturbing too. More art than pornography. At least that’s what I tell myself as I shyly turn another page.
I glance around the room, suddenly aware of how ridiculous my hesitation is. No one is watching me. Eleanor is dead. I’m alone in her bedroom, holding a book I probably should have put back ten seconds ago.
Still, my face warms.
I turn one more page. Then I close the book and slide it back into the drawer. “Okay,” I say. “So we’re learning things. No wonder Mom didn’t want me to visit.”
I shut the drawer and leave the bedroom.
The living room is harder to ignore. It has gravity. Maybe it’s the size of the windows, or the strange mix of art and photographs on the walls. Maybe it’s just Eleanor. Even gone, she seems to have arranged the apartment so you have to move through it on her terms.
Near one of the large windows is a writing desk. A bowl of keys sits on one side. Beside it, a silver lighter engraved with Eleanor’s initials. And next to the lighter, placed neatly in the center of the desk, is a pair of binoculars.
I pick them up.
I don’t really think about it as I lift them to my eyes, just following an irresistible impulse.
The city jumps into view. Rooftops. Windows. Terraces. Water towers. Fire escapes. All the hidden spaces between buildings that look empty from the street but aren’t.
I adjust the focus.
A man waters plants on a narrow terrace several buildings away. He moves slowly from pot to pot, taking great care in the task.
I adjust the binoculars again.
A couple sits on a fire escape, sharing a cigarette. Their shoulders touch. The woman says something and the man laughs, leaning into her.
They have no idea I can see them.
I watch longer than I should.
Finally, I shift my attention to a man preparing dinner in his kitchen. He is in absurdly good shape. The kind of body that makes you wonder if some people are living under entirely different rules.
For one second, I just stare.
Then guilt hits me.
I lower the binoculars fast, my cheeks turning red hot.
“What the hell are you doing?” I whisper.
I should put the binoculars down. I almost do.
But the city is right there. Alive. Private. Secret. All these little pieces of other people’s lives, close enough to touch and still completely out of reach.
After a moment, I raise the binoculars again.
This time slower.
Just in time to see the handsome man in the kitchen turn away from the window and disappear deeper into his apartment.
I exhale, both relieved and a little disappointed. Who knew I was such a perv, I think while shaking my head at my behavior. Maybe some of Eleanor’s free spirit is rubbing off on me.
I lower the binoculars and set them back on the desk.
Then I turn away from the windows and notice the bookshelves.
They cover most of one wall, floor to ceiling. I drift toward them and run my fingers along the spines.
Art books. Photography. Design. Architecture. Thick expensive volumes with clean covers and serious titles. The kind of books people display when they want you to know they have taste.
Then, without warning, the subject matter changes.
This new collection focuses on true crime.
Books on serial killers, mass murder, cults, unsolved murders and kidnappings.
I pause.
This isn’t one book tucked away as a guilty pleasure. It’s a large, organized collection. Some of the spines are cracked and the pages have little paper markers sticking out of them.
Eleanor didn’t simply read these. She studied them.
I pull one out, look at the cover, then slide it back into place.
So we have that in common too. A love for abnormal psychology.
My mother would have hated this shelf. She hated anything dark, anything ugly that suggested the world was not something you could keep out by locking the door and saying a prayer.
When I was seventeen, she found a forensic psychology book in my room and threw it away. The next morning, she left a devotional on my bed with a note saying she was sorry, but she loved me too much to let me invite darkness into my life.
Somehow, I ended up feeling like I was the one who’d done something wrong. That my interests were abnormal and that there was something wrong with me for being fascinated by the dark side of life.
After that, I learned to hide things better.
Podcasts through earbuds. Books at the bottom of my backpack. Browser history cleared, my morbid curiosity kept quiet.
Eleanor didn’t have to hide her inner freak. No, she gave it a whole shelf. I respect her for that.
At the end of the row, one book sits apart from the others.
It’s larger. Older. Bound in dark leather.
No title on the spine.
As I reach for it…
BANG BANG BANG.
The knock hits the apartment so hard I jump.
My hand jerks back from the book like I’ve been caught stealing.
For a second, I just stand there with my heart pounding. Then I cross the room.
When I open the door, a woman is standing in the hallway.
She’s in her seventies, tall and thin, with sharp shoulders and wiry gray hair pulled back from her face. She is frumpy and disheveled, wearing baggy clothes. Her eyes look like they haven’t slept properly in years.
She studies me. Her gaze moves from my face to my clothes and back again, as if she’s measuring me against some private list of expectations.
Finally she says, “You don’t look like her. But you have her eyes.”
I blink. “I’m sorry. Can I help you?”
“Leave while you still can.”
She says it flatly but there is an urgency in her eyes.
“Who are you?”
“Marian. I live below you.”
“You knew my grandmother?”
“I knew what she was capable of.”
The hallway seems to get colder.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Pray you don’t find out.”
I stare at her with disbelief and experience a flash of anger.
“Who are you to talk about her like that? You do realize my grandmother was murdered.”
“I know,” Marian says. “And the world’s better off for it.”
For a moment, I can’t speak. Something inside me shifts. The anger narrows. Hardens.
“I think you should go.”
Marian looks at me for another second. Something changes behind her tired eyes. Recognition, maybe. Or fear. Like she sees something in my face she was hoping not to find.
Then she turns and walks down the hall.
I stay in the doorway and watch her.
She reaches the elevator but doesn’t press the button right away. She just stands there, facing the closed doors, perfectly still.
Listening. For what, I have no idea.
After a long moment, she stabs the button.
The elevator arrives, and Marian steps inside without looking back. The elevator doors close behind her.
I shut my own door slowly.
“Well,” I say to the empty apartment. “She seems nice.”
That night, I lie in Eleanor’s bed with the lights off and my eyes open. I should be asleep. After all, I’ve been awake since before dawn. I traveled all morning. By any normal measure, I should be exhausted. But the room doesn’t feel like mine yet.
The shapes are wrong. The shadows are wrong. The curtains shift slightly near the windows, and the city light bleeding around their edges turns everything a dull orange-gray. Pipes knock somewhere in the walls, traffic moves far below. The building keeps making small sounds around me.
Old sounds.
I stare at the ceiling. Then I close my eyes. A creak comes from somewhere above me.
Soft. Indistinct.
I open my eyes.
For a few seconds, I don’t move. I hold my breath and listen.
The sound doesn’t repeat.
I exhale slowly.
It was nothing, I tell myself. An old building settling. Pipes. Wind. Any of the normal explanations people reach for because the alternative is too stupid to consider.
Still, my eyes stay on the ceiling.
And they stay there for a long time.