Page 122 of The New Couple in 5B

This isn’t happening, I think, as I lie on the ground. It’s just a dream.

He stands over me, looks down, pitying. “We bind ourselves, rose petal. This world is a kind of prison, and we can only free ourselves.”

I wake with a start and find myself in my own bed, the shades pulled, the room darkened. I reach for my phone but I can’t move and my phone is not on the bedside table. I fall back heavily onto my pillows and try to piece together reality.

What time is it? The clock is gone. There’s no light coming in through the drapes.

There’s a terrible ache in my wrists and my ankles. I realize with a shock that my wrists and ankles are, in fact, bound. That part was no dream.

“What the fuck?” I struggle, arms behind my back.

“You’ve been sleeping a long time, dear. You must have needed it. You young women today, you work yourselves so hard.”

The light flips on and Ella sits in the chair over by the window. She looks pale and ghoulish. Has she just been sitting there in the dark, watching me sleep? Did she tie me up? Those final moments in her kitchen come back—Charles was there, Abi. What is happening?

My mind grapples with this bizarre reality.

With Chad missing, who will wonder where I am? Max? Detective Crowe—I am supposed to meet him at nine. Will he come for me, bust inside here?

“Me?” Ella goes on, as if we’re just chatting over coffee. “I only ever wanted a husband and children. I never had any grand ambitions. Not like you and my Lilian. Sodriven.”

“Ella,” I manage. “Whatare you doing?Whyare you doing this?”

She shakes her head, puts a finger to her lips.

“This apartment,” she says. “It’sours. Did you know that it belonged to Charles’s family, that we divided and sold half of the space in 1960?”

“Yes, I knew that,” I say, trying to keep my voice even. Slowly under the covers, I start working on my bindings. “To Paul and Willa Winter.”

“Horrible people,” she says with a disgusted shake of her head. “It nearly killed Charles to put up that wall and sell off half of his family legacy. His grandfather was one of the original investors in this building. A great friend of Marc LeClerc, the architect.”

I decide to play along with the whole chatting easily over coffee vibe despite the fact that I’ve been drugged and bound, am clinging to consciousness.

“Why did you sell it?” I ask, keeping my voice light, still working my bindings.

She rolls her eyes, shifts in her seat. “Why does anyone sell something that’s important to them, dear? We needed the money.”

My head is a jackhammer of pain, stomach roiling. What did she give me? What was in that soup? I will myself to be strong, solid. I have to find a way out of here. She’s an old woman; if I can undo my bindings, she won’t be any match for me. I have no idea how close Charles and Abi are; maybe they’re just outside the bedroom door.

“Charles wasn’t much of a provider,” she goes on. “The gallery we owned for years lost as much as it earned. His inheritance was dwindling. He was burning through mine, as well. We had no choice, really, if we wanted to stay on at the Windermere. So we sold this half.”

The bindings at my wrists are loosening, I think. I keep working them slowly beneath the covers.

“He wrote terrible novels, you know,” says Ella. “Paul Winter? He fancied himself a literary star, but he was just a hack. And her—running around on him behind his back, out at all hours. With our Abi, can you imagine? She broke so many hearts. A dancer with dreams of Broadway, but a middling talent at best, little more than a stripper.”

“Willa Winter had an affair with Abi?”

I try to imagine Abi young and in love. But I can’t see him as anything but what he is now. Some kind of sentry for the Windermere, doing the bidding of the Aldridges.

“The Winters were about to sell it again, wanting to move to the country like most people then, someplace safe for their children. We hoped at that time to buy it back but, even then, we couldn’t afford it. Charles always had this scheme and that grand plan, spending money like there was an endless supply of it, and already the proceeds from the first sale were dwindling.”

She’s lost in memory. I try to bring her back to this moment.

“Ella, what did you give me? Please—let me go.”

She lowers her voice, leans closer and whispers. “I can’t, Rosie. I’m sorry.”

“Is it really just the apartment you want? I mean—it’s yours.” That can’t be it, can it? All of this just for a two-bedroom apartment. I remember what Max said about motive. It’s personal.