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I start to watch Erica’s video for a seventh time.
“It’s just past midnight, and I swear I heard a noise.”
As do I.
Two raps on 12A’s door—as quick and jarring as gunshots.
My whole body jolts. I suspect I look exactly like Erica does in the video.
The walk from the sitting room to the foyer is slow, cautious, my heart beating double time. The same person who knocked when Erica was making that video could be on the other side of the door. The same person who made her disappear.
It’s him.
But when I peer through the peephole, I see not a him but a her.
Greta Manville. Standing at my door with her cardigan and tote bag.
“I had a feeling you intended to check in on me at some point today,” she says once I open the door. “I thought I’d spare you the trip and check on you instead.”
“That’s a pleasant reversal,” I say.
Even though I’m holding the door open for her, Greta remains just beyond the threshold, as if waiting for an invitation to enter.
“Would you like to come in?”
Having heard the magic words, she steps inside. “I won’t stay long. Never impose. That’s a bit of advice many from your generation should heed more often.”
“Duly noted,” I say before guiding her into the sitting room. “Would you like something to drink? I have coffee, tea, and, well, that’s pretty much it at the moment.”
“Tea would be lovely. But only a small cup, please.”
I retreat to the kitchen, fill the kettle with water, and put it on thestove. When I return to the sitting room, I find Greta roaming its perimeter.
“I’m not being nosy,” she says. “Just admiring what’s been done to the place. It’s less cluttered now.”
“You’ve been here before?”
“My dear, I used to live here.”
I look at her, surprised. “Back when you wroteHeart of a Dreamer?”
“Indeed.”
I knew there were too many similarities for it to be a coincidence. Only someone who’s spent hours gazing at the view from the bedroom window would be able to describe it with such accuracy.
“So this really is Ginny’s apartment?” I say.
“No, it’syourapartment. Never confuse fiction with reality. No good ever comes of it.” Greta continues to roam, venturing to the spot by the window taken up by the brass telescope. “This is where I wrote the book, by the way. There was a rickety little table right here by this window. I spent hours tapping away on an electric typewriter. Oh, the racket it made! It annoyed my parents to no end.”
“How long did they live here?”
“Decades,” Greta says. “But it was in the family longer than that. My mother inherited it from my grandmother. I lived here until my first marriage, returning after its inevitable failure to write that book you so adore.”
I follow Greta as she moves through the study and then back into the hallway, her index finger trailing along the wall. When the teakettle whistles, we both head to the kitchen, where Greta takes a seat in the breakfast nook. I pour two cups of tea and join her, grateful for her presence. It makes me far less jumpy than I was ten minutes ago.
“How much has the place changed since you lived here?” I say.
“In some ways, quite a bit. In others, not at all. The furniture is different, of course. And there used to be a maid’s room near the bottom of the steps. But the wallpaper is the same. What do you thinkof it? And you can be honest. Don’t worry about poking a hole in any nostalgia I might feel for this place.”