Lock Every Door(71)

“That’s a pleasant reversal,” I say.

Even though I’m holding the door open for her, Greta remains just beyond the threshold, as if waiting for an invitation to enter.

“Would you like to come in?”

Having heard the magic words, she steps inside. “I won’t stay long. Never impose. That’s a bit of advice many from your generation should heed more often.”

“Duly noted,” I say before guiding her into the sitting room. “Would you like something to drink? I have coffee, tea, and, well, that’s pretty much it at the moment.”

“Tea would be lovely. But only a small cup, please.”

I retreat to the kitchen, fill the kettle with water, and put it on the stove. When I return to the sitting room, I find Greta roaming its perimeter.

“I’m not being nosy,” she says. “Just admiring what’s been done to the place. It’s less cluttered now.”

“You’ve been here before?”

“My dear, I used to live here.”

I look at her, surprised. “Back when you wrote Heart of a Dreamer?”

“Indeed.”

I knew there were too many similarities for it to be a coincidence. Only someone who’s spent hours gazing at the view from the bedroom window would be able to describe it with such accuracy.

“So this really is Ginny’s apartment?” I say.

“No, it’s your apartment. Never confuse fiction with reality. No good ever comes of it.” Greta continues to roam, venturing to the spot by the window taken up by the brass telescope. “This is where I wrote the book, by the way. There was a rickety little table right here by this window. I spent hours tapping away on an electric typewriter. Oh, the racket it made! It annoyed my parents to no end.”

“How long did they live here?”

“Decades,” Greta says. “But it was in the family longer than that. My mother inherited it from my grandmother. I lived here until my first marriage, returning after its inevitable failure to write that book you so adore.”

I follow Greta as she moves through the study and then back into the hallway, her index finger trailing along the wall. When the teakettle whistles, we both head to the kitchen, where Greta takes a seat in the breakfast nook. I pour two cups of tea and join her, grateful for her presence. It makes me far less jumpy than I was ten minutes ago.

“How much has the place changed since you lived here?” I say.

“In some ways, quite a bit. In others, not at all. The furniture is different, of course. And there used to be a maid’s room near the bottom of the steps. But the wallpaper is the same. What do you think of it? And you can be honest. Don’t worry about poking a hole in any nostalgia I might feel for this place.”

I look into the teacup, my reflection shimmering atop the copper-colored liquid.

“I hate it,” I say.

“I’m not surprised,” Greta says as she contemplates me from the other side of the breakfast nook. “There are two types of people in this world, dear. Those who would look at that wallpaper and see only flowers, and those who would see only faces.”

“Fantasy versus reality,” I say.

Greta nods. “Exactly. At first, I thought you were one of those people who only sees the flowers. Head in the clouds. Prone to flights of fancy. Now I know better. You see the faces, don’t you?”

I give her a quick nod.

“That means you’re a realist.”

“What about you?” I say.

“I see both at once and decide which is more important to focus on,” Greta says. “Which I suppose makes me pragmatic. But today, I choose to focus on the flowers. Which is the real reason I stopped by. I wanted to give you this.”

She digs through her tote bag, eventually removing a first-edition hardcover of Heart of a Dreamer.

“It’s signed,” Greta says as she hands it to me. “Just as you requested when you first attacked me in the lobby.”

“I didn’t attack,” I say, feigning annoyance when in fact I’m touched beyond words.

That feeling—of friendship, of gratitude—lasts only a moment. Because when I open the book and see what Greta wrote on the title page, my blood turns cold.

“You don’t like it?” Greta says.

I stare at the inscription, rereading every word. I want to be sure I’m not mistaken.

I’m not.

“I love it,” I say, a bit too loudly, hoping the sound drowns out the voice of doubt that’s now whispering in my ear.

It doesn’t.

“Then why do you look like you’re about to be hit with one of my sudden sleeps?”

Because that’s how I feel. Like I’m perched on the edge of a great chasm, waiting for the slightest breeze to shove me screaming into it.

“I feel bad, that’s all,” I say. “You didn’t need to go to all this trouble.”

“It was no trouble at all,” Greta says. “I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t want to.”

“But you were right to be annoyed with me when we first met. You must get bothered all the time to sign copies. Especially by the building’s apartment sitters.”

“You’re wrong there. I haven’t signed a copy for any other person at the Bartholomew. You’re special, Jules. This is my way of showing you that.”