Page 95 of The New Couple in 5B

Max rubs at his chin. “Okay, let’s say he is watching and listening. Why? What would he want?”

I haven’t thought about this, but I do now. “Maybe he’s gathering information about the residents. Using it somehow?”

“Blackmail? To what end? Like any character, you need to figure out what he wants to understand him. What does he want that would be accomplished by listening in on the private lives of residents?”

It’s a good question. “He’s a voyeur?”

Max shrugs.

“Money? Power?” I say.

“Did you mention that his mother was in an assisted living home in Queens? That’s not cheap. Way more than a doorman can afford, maybe?”

“Is that reason to spy, blackmail—maybe even kill?”

“Motive is personal,” he says. “What makes sense to someone else won’t always make sense to you or me.”

I am swamped by the fog of confusion, my own sadness, the heaviness of all of it.

I lean back against the counter. “You were right. We shouldn’t have come here.”

“No,” he says, shaking his head and looking at me with apology. “I shouldn’t have said that. I don’t really believe that, do you? That places are cursed?”

“I don’t know what to believe.”

He blows out a breath, lowers his voice to a whisper. “Are you safe here, Rosie?”

“I don’t know,” I answer truthfully.

“Then let’s go.” He sweeps an arm toward the door. “We’ll go back to my place, call Chad and you stay with me until we’ve figured this out.”

“It’s tempting.”

“Then pack,” he says. “Let’s get you out of here for a while.”

I don’t want to leave my home and stay with Max. Chad would not be thrilled with that move. And Max seems too eager for this option. It feels like defeat, like I’m slinking away, slipping out the back door and letting Abi win. Finally, I shake my head. “No. I can’t.”

“You can’t or you won’t?”

“Both.”

Xavier’s funeral is this afternoon. I plan to attend. I want to say goodbye, even though we’d barely come to know each other. And our encounters were all strange to say the least. But I’m also wondering what I can find out there.

Finally resigned, I guess, Max blows out a breath. “Then tell me—what can I do?”

I think about this a moment—about Detective Crowe out there, looking for reasons to arrest Chad—maybe he’s even looking for reasons to arrest me. After all, I was the last person to talk to Dana. One of the last people to see Xavier alive. Crowe’s words and phrases keep ringing back to me, about Chad, about Ivan, about all the dark events in Chad’s past and present.

How long will it be before Crowe figures out that I come from a long line of con artists and fraudsters?

Maybe it’s Max, or maybe it’s the fact that I’ve managed to get out of bed for the first time in days. But I feel a sudden clarity. The truth is thatall of thatis out of my hands. I can’t control Detective Crowe, and Olivia said to go about normal life. And that means pulling myself together, moving on from the pain of not being pregnant, returning to researching and writing. Because that’s where I make sense of things—on the page. Maybe I won’t cancel that appointment this afternoon, after all.

“Help me get back to work? It’s the only thing I can control right now.”

Max nods decisively. “Caffeine,” he says. “That’s the lifeblood of all writers.”

I make some coffee, and he tells me about some of the projects he’s working on freelance—a debut, a memoir, a young adult dystopian adventure.

“I can pay you,” I say when he’s done.