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TEN

The tapping is so soft that at first Alex doesn’t notice it, her subconscious deciding it’s some far-off dripping in the walls or pipes. It is only when it suddenly stops that she glances up from the message, her ears pricking.

She waits and, hearing nothing, clicks on another email. This one is from a woman whose wife is trying to convince her to have children, but she isn’t sure she is ready. Alex settles in, getting immediately sucked into her life, when the tapping comes back louder. Now she realizes that someone has been knocking on her office door.

“Come in!” Alex calls out, embarrassed to have taken so long to answer. The door swings open slowly. Alex stands up, bracing for the mantis-like body of Howard Demetri. Instead, a young woman stands in the doorway.

“Oh, good, you’re here already,” she says, her voice bubbling over as she pushes her way into the room. “I was hoping you would be.”

“Yes, I am,” Alex says with a perplexed smile, trying to place her. The girl has round cheeks and circular wire-rimmed glasses perched on the end of a button nose. Her pale legs poke out from under a short, pleated skirt. Her entire body has a youthful fullness to it as though all of her edges have been smoothed over. All except for her hair, which is dyed nearly black and cut severely to her chin in a line so straight it must have been freshly put there by a razor blade.

The girl comes to stand in front of the desk, her round cheeks flushed with excitement. “I’m so glad you’re here. And of course, I’m so happy to have a real job to do again. After Francis—” She pauses and frowns, swallowing uncomfortably at the memory. “Well, I’ve tried to help out in the mailroom, but it’s mostly been a lot of waiting. And, you know, my mom always said idle minds and all that.” She grimaces, sticking out her tongue theatrically.

“Sorry, who are you?” Alex says, doing her best not to sound rude. The girl’s face falls.

“I’m Lucy Bentley.” She presses her hand to her sweater, which Alex notices has an embroidery of a cat in the corner. “I’m your assistant. I was Francis’s assistant for almost five years.”

Alex scrambles to make her feel better. “To be fair, they have hardly told me anything. Jonathan just dropped me off here in her office a bit ago. I was thinking you were going to be Howard Demetri, actually. He’s supposed to stop by, but then maybe he got sucked into something. I get the feeling everyone is spread a little thin?”

When she mentions Howard’s name, Lucy glances back at the door as if she is worried he might be there. Up close, Alex realizes that Lucy can’t be older than her midtwenties, though her clothes and demeanor make her seem like she’s a teenager. “You read the vibe right. It’s been pretty hard around here, honestly. The first and worst, obviously, was losing Francis, and then all the budget cuts. This place feels like it’s barely holding on sometimes. I am so lucky they hired you when they did, or I bet I would have been out of a job.”

“What exactly did Francis have you do for her?” Alex asks carefully. She had never imagined Francis as the type to have help on the job, and Alex doesn’t want Lucy to know that she has no idea what to even do with an assistant. Having someone hovering over her makes her uneasy.

“Well, she had me run little errands for her, get coffee, make printouts, things like that. But most of my job is picking up and sorting all her letters from the mailroom.”

“Letters from the mailroom?” Alex asks, her stomach clenching. “There are more letters?”

“Oh dear, you poor thing.” Lucy tries to suppress a smile. “Did you think the only letters for you to read are the ones you get online?”

“No. I mean, yes? I guess I thought they were all digitized now. I don’t know what I was thinking, really.” Alex raises her eyebrows helplessly and shrugs.

Lucy grins, showing off two fang-like incisors that protrude farther than the rest of her teeth, giving her an oddly lupine quality. “No. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t find it funny. It’s just that there are a ton of people who still write in on paper.” She laughs again. “The good news is that Francis always said that all the juiciest letters came from the mailroom and not by email.”

“She did?” Alex tries to imagine the woman she thought she knew saying something like that and can’t.

Lucy shrugs. “I think some people actually feel safer that way, more anonymous. It’s harder to trace a piece of paper than an email address. Or maybe there is something to writing on a piece of paper and sending it.” She pauses, her eyes getting a faraway look like she’s remembering something.

Alex tries not to panic at the thought of all those letters just sitting there unopened. She’ll have to read them all right away if she doesn’t want to fall behind. “Right. That makes sense. Well, let’s get to it, I guess! Can you show them to me?”

“Now?” Lucy looks startled. “Are you sure you don’t want me to get you a coffee or something first?”

“I think I should get started. Maybe we could bring them up here?”

“Yes! Right. Good idea,” Lucy says, looking around the office. “I think they’ll all fit in this room.”