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“Technically, yes. Unless you were invited.”
“Then I plead the fifth.”
Nick laughs. He’s got a nice laugh—a merry chuckle that makes me happy to have caused it. I used to make Andrew laugh all the time. His throaty, trickling laugh was one of the things I liked most about him. I heard it a lot during our first months together. Slightly less after we moved in together. Then it stopped altogether and neither of us noticed. Maybe if we had, things would have turned out differently.
“I won’t tell Leslie, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Nick says. “She’s the one who insists on those silly rules. Most people here couldn’t care less what the apartment sitters do.”
“Then I’ll confess—I went to visit Greta Manville.”
“Now that’s a surprise. Greta doesn’t strike me as being very social, to put a polite spin on it. How on earth did you manage to charm her?”
“I didn’t,” I say. “I bribed her.”
Nick laughs again, and I realize he’s enjoying this conversation. I am, too. I think we might be flirting. I’m not really sure. It’s probably just the wine talking. I’m not the kind of girl who flirts with her next-door neighbor.
“It must have been important for you to resort to bribery.”
“I needed to talk to her about Ingrid Gallagher.”
Nick frowns. “Ah. The runaway.”
“So you’ve heard,” I say.
“Word travels fast in this building.”
Just like that, I realize Ingrid made a mistake when she approached Greta Manville about the Bartholomew’s past. She shouldhave asked someone else. Someone friendly. And handsome. And who has lived here all his life.
“I bet you know a lot about this place,” I say.
Nick shrugs. “I’ve heard some things over the years.”
I bite my bottom lip, not quite believing what I’m about to say next. “Would you like to get coffee? Or maybe a bite to eat?”
Nick gives me a surprised look. “What did you have in mind?”
“You pick. After all, you know the neighborhood.”
And, I hope, he also knows a lot about the Bartholomew.
16
Instead of going out to eat, Nick suggests retreating to his apartment. “I have leftover pizza and cold beer,” he says. “Sorry to be so simple.”
“Simple is good,” I say.
So is free, considering I don’t really have the money to buy my neighbor dinner while fishing for information about the Bartholomew.
Inside 12B, Nick hands me a bottle of beer before returning to the kitchen to heat up the pizza. In his absence, I sip my beer and roam the sitting room, checking out the photographs that fill the walls. Some of them are of Nick looking dapper in a variety of far-off locales. Versailles. Venice. A savannah in Africa lit by the rising sun. Seeing them makes me wonder about the person on the other side of the camera. Was it a woman? Have they traveled the world together? Did she break his heart?
On the coffee table is a leather-bound photo album similar to one my parents owned. It’s long gone now, like most of their belongings. I think of the framed photo currently on the nightstand in the bedroom of 12A. It’s the only picture that remains of my family, and I’m not even in it. I envy Nick and his entire album of family photos.
The first photograph in the album is also presumably the oldest—a sepia-tinted image of a young couple standing in front of the Bartholomew. The woman has an opaque look about her, thanks to featureswashed out by too much sun and too little makeup. The man with her is a handsome devil, though. Familiar, too.
I carry the album into the kitchen, where Nick is pulling slices of reheated pizza from the oven. Just behind him, the painting of the ouroboros stares at me with its single, flame-like eye.
“Is this your family?” I ask.
Nick leans in to get a better look at the photograph. “My great-grandparents.”