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I don’t tell Greta how when I’m feeling happy, I sometimes get the need to flirt with fire. To feel its heat on my skin. To have the flamesinge me just enough to know what it feels like, so that I can understand what my parents went through.
For me.
For my future.
For the sister who has yet to return.
Greta slips her hand over mine, her palm hot, as if she, too, has held it to an open flame.
“I’m sorry for your loss. I’m sure you miss them greatly.”
“I do,” I say. “I miss them. I miss Jane.”
“Jane?”
“My sister. She vanished two years before the fire. There’s been no trace of her since. She might have run away. She might have been murdered. At this point, I doubt I’ll ever know.”
I’ve slumped noticeably in the booth, my arms at my sides, my body numb. My version of one of Greta’s sudden sleeps. If I feel sadness, it’s the same simmering grief I always experience. The kind of pain I long ago learned to live with. Talking about my parents and Jane doesn’t make that grief feel better or worse. It simply remains.
“Thank you for entrusting me with your story,” Greta says.
“Now you know why I prefer fantasy over reality.”
“I can’t blame you,” Greta says. “I also see why you’re so keen to find Ingrid.”
“I’m doing a terrible job of it.”
“If I were a betting woman, which I’m not, I’d wager she went off somewhere with a young man,” Greta says. “Or woman. I don’t judge when it comes to matters of the heart.”
Spoken like the woman who wrote a romance beloved by generations of teenage girls. And even though I want to believe Ingrid is off somewhere enjoying a happily-ever-after, everything I know so far suggests the opposite.
“I just can’t shake the feeling she’s in trouble,” I say. “She specifically told me she had nowhere else to go.”
“If you suspect something bad happened, why don’t you go to the police?”
“I called them. It didn’t go well. They said there wasn’t enough information to get involved.”
This elicits a sympathetic sigh from Greta. “If I were you, I’d call some of the hospitals in the area. Maybe there was an accident and she required medical treatment. If that doesn’t work, I’d look around the neighborhood. If she has no place to go, then there’s a chance she’s out on the streets. I know it’s hard to think someone we know might be homeless, but have you checked any of the city’s shelters?”
“You think I should?”
“It certainly couldn’t hurt,” Greta says with a firm nod. “Ingrid Gallagher might be there, hiding in plain sight.”
23
The nearest homeless shelter for women is twenty blocks south and two blocks west of the restaurant. After making sure Greta can get back to the Bartholomew on her own, I go there on the slim chance that she’s right and Ingrid is living on the streets.
The shelter is housed in a building that’s seen better days. The exterior is brown brick. The windows are tinted. It used to be a YMCA, as evidenced by the ghost of those letters hovering to the right of the main entrance. Also hovering there is a group of women smoking in a semicircle. All of them eye me with suspicion as I approach. A silent message telling me what I already know.
Just like at the Bartholomew, I do not belong here.
I’m starting to think I don’t belong anywhere. That it’s my lot in life to occupy a limbo all my own. Still, I approach them and smile, trying not to act frightened, even though I am. Which then makes me feel guilty. I have more in common with these women than with anyone at the Bartholomew.
I remove my phone from my pocket and hold it up so they can see the selfie of Ingrid and me in Central Park. “Have any of you seen this girl in the past few days?”
Only one woman in the smoking circle bothers to look. She stares at the photo with hard eyes while biting the inside of her razor-sharp cheeks. When she speaks, her voice is surprisingly soft. I thought she’d sound as weathered as she looks.
“No, ma’am, I haven’t seen her. Not around here.”