Page 137 of The New Couple in 5B

“The Aldridges kept trying to convince me to sell the place to Lilian. Lilian always turning up, telling me that she was scouting for Robert. Abi always watching, watching. Detective Graves with his constant suspicions. Detective Crowe lurking. Nolan’s new trial. They wouldn’t let me be.”

“Did you kill Dana?” I ask.

“You know, I think she was the only person who ever truly saw me. The real me. She was so angry that we got the apartment. She was going to tell you everything, about her plan with the Aldridges, how I screwed her out of her inheritance. I was just trying to reason with her, get her to shut up. She wouldn’t.”

He’s crying. “She wouldnotshut up about how I was a bad person, a monster, that once you knew you’d hate me. Ididmanipulate Ivan. It was the least he could do, after all we did for him.”

“The letter,” I say. “You took it.”

He glances up at the sky, snow gathering in his curls, offers a slow nod.

“It was Ivan’s apology to Dana, written long ago, saying how he hoped that the inheriting of the apartment took care of her and her children in a way he never had. If she’d seen that, she’d know her suspicions about me were true. She’d have grounds for her claim that I manipulated a dying, drug-addled old man.”

“And Betty?”

“She overheard me pushing Ivan to change his will.”

All of it—such a waste. So many lives ruined, ended, because of an apartment.

“We never needed it,” I choke out between sobs. “I never did. I just needed you.Us.”

He gives me the loving smile that has been the joy of my life with him. “I know that. Because you’re good—the only good thing in my life. And that bad person, the person that I was, I thought he was gone. I’m not that person with you, Rosie. I’m better.Youmake me better.”

I am weeping now because I know he’s right. The man I love is not the one capable of doing all those terrible things. He’s someone else, someone who only exists with me, for me. I reach for him, but he stays back.

They’re pounding at the door. A rhythmic thumping echoes in the night as they try to break it down.

What if they can’t? What if they stay out there, and we stay here forever? A kind of limbo where the world outside, the real world, can’t touch us. Above me, I see the stars. It reminds me of my father and his run-down barn church. Daddy always said that you couldn’t see the stars in the city. But he’s wrong. They’re up there, twinkling dimly against all the light we create down here.

“I can’t go back there,” he says, looking behind at the door where they are still pounding. He keeps creeping toward me, his hand outstretched. “I can’t face the world that’s waiting for us, Rosie.”

“Please,” I whisper.

But he’s so fast and lithe—he’s on the ledge before I can stop him. He teeters there, back to the city, facing me.

I drop to my knees and put my hands in prayer to my chest. My voice, I don’t even recognize it.

“Don’t. Don’t do this. It doesn’t have to be this way.”

“I think love makes you a better person, you know?” he says, balancing there. “Peoplecanchange. You changed me. Not just because you loved me, Rosie. But becauseIlovedyou. You made me see that there was more to life than just my own appetites, emotions, rages, desires. Thank you for that.”

“Come down. Come back to me. We’ll be okay.” I’m still clinging to hope, my mind grappling for a way out. But my voice is just a wail in the night, in the sirens wafting up from down below.

The door bursts open then, Detective Crowe coming through.

And Chad turns, with me screaming, racing to the edge, slow motion, time warping, my fingers just grazing his shirt. I almost made it to him. Almost.

It doesn’t seem like he jumped as much as he took flight, spreading his arms like wings, never making a sound and disappearing into the city lights.

epilogue

My niece, little Rosie, is in my arms.

It’s a beautiful spring day in the Ozarks with the wind blowing and trees bowing and flowers blooming.

The congregation has gathered in my father’s church to celebrate the arrival of this new little spirit. Sarah and Brian stand on either side of me and I hand little Rosie, who is quiet and sweet, off to her mother, as my father anoints her with water from the river on our property, saying words about nature and God and how every new soul in this world is a blessing, no matter what path they take through this life.

And I am here, home again. And not.