Lock Every Door(28)

I tell myself I shouldn’t be worried.

Yet I am.

I have Jane’s disappearance to thank for that. The day it happened is notable for how unconcerned we all were at first. She was nineteen and restless and prone to wandering off on her own unannounced. Sometimes she’d skip dinner without notice and not return until after midnight, smelling of beer and cigarettes consumed in the basement of one friend or another.

When she failed to come home that night, we all assumed that was the case. We ate dinner without her. We watched some stupid movie about aliens on TV. When my parents went to bed, I stayed up to reread my favorite parts of Heart of a Dreamer. It was, all things considered, a typical night at the Larsen home.

It wasn’t until dawn the next morning that we realized something was amiss. My father woke up to go to the bathroom. On his way there, he noticed Jane’s bedroom door was still ajar, the room empty, her bed untouched. He woke up my mother and me, asking if we’d heard Jane come home the night before. We hadn’t. After several rounds of awkward, early-morning phone calls to her friends, we finally understood the terrible truth of the situation.

Jane was missing.

In fact, she’d been missing since the previous afternoon, and none of us had immediately thought to check on her. When I look back on our initial lack of concern, I can’t help but wonder if Jane would still be here if we had acted sooner or been the least bit worried right away.

Now I worry too much. In college, I drove Chloe nuts by insisting she check in with me throughout the day. On the rare times when she didn’t, a twinge of anxiety would form in my gut. I feel one there now about Ingrid—a tiny acorn of worry. It expands slightly when I check my phone again and see that it’s now quarter to one.

I leave the park, worry tugging me back to the Bartholomew. On my way, I send another text simply asking Ingrid to please respond. Again, I know I’m overreacting. I also don’t care.

Inside the building, I pass Dylan, the other apartment sitter. He’s dressed for a jog in the park. Sweats. Sneakers. Electric guitar screeching from his earbuds. I enter the elevator he just vacated and almost press the top button but instead hit the one for the eleventh floor. I tell myself it won’t hurt to check on Ingrid. I even come up with reasons for why she was a no-show. Maybe she’s sick and not checking her phone. Maybe the battery died and she’s impatiently waiting for it to charge.

Or maybe—just maybe—my instincts about last night are right and Ingrid was in some kind of trouble but was too scared to talk about it. I close my eyes and recall the flatness of her voice, that plastered-on smile, the way that smile vanished just before she shut the door.

Once I’m standing outside 11A, I check my phone one last time for a reply from Ingrid. After seeing that there isn’t one, I knock on the door. Two gentle raps. As if this is a casual drop-in and not the product of worry sprouting upward from the pit of my stomach.

The door swings open.

Just beyond it stands Leslie Evelyn in another of her Chanel suits. One as red as the wallpaper in 12A. There’s a harried look on her face. A strand of hair has escaped her updo and now curls down her forehead.

“Jules,” she says, not quite hiding her surprise to see me here. “How’s your arm?”

I absently touch the bandage hidden under my jacket and blouse. The cut’s so inconsequential that I barely notice it.

“It’s fine,” I say, glancing over her shoulder into the apartment itself. “Is Ingrid here?”

“She’s not,” Leslie says with a noticeable sigh.

“Do you know where she is?”

“I don’t, sweetie. I’m sorry.”

“But doesn’t she live here?”

“She did.”

I notice her use of the past tense, and my brow furrows.

“She doesn’t anymore?” I say.

“That’s correct,” Leslie says with certainty. “Ingrid is gone.”





13


Jane is gone.

That was how my father put it a week after my sister failed to come home. It was almost midnight, and the two of us were alone in the kitchen, my mother having taken to her bed hours earlier. By this point the black Beetle was common knowledge, the police had talked to Jane’s friends, and her picture had appeared on every telephone pole and storefront in the county. My father took a sip of the black coffee he’d been mainlining for days and said, simply and sadly, “Jane is gone.”

I remember feeling more confused than sad. I still held out hope that Jane would return. At that moment, what I couldn’t understand was why she ever left in the first place. I feel that same confusion now as I watch Leslie swipe the rogue curl of hair back into place.

“Gone? She’s no longer living here?”

“She is not,” Leslie says with a disdainful sniff.

I think of the rules. Ingrid must have broken one. A big one. It’s the only reason I can think of for her sudden, shocking departure.

“Did she do something wrong?”

“Not that I’m aware of,” Leslie says. “She wasn’t kicked out, if that’s what you mean.”

“But Ingrid told me she’d be here for another ten weeks.”

“She was supposed to be.”

I’m hit with another kick of confusion. None of this makes sense. “She just left?”