Page 36 of Lock Every 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 justleft?”

“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?”

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