When No One Is Watching(67)

They laugh, and I just watch them, my whole body feeling heavy as my brain tries to fight what my gut is screaming at me: This isn’t right. This definitely isn’t right. They’re just moving into someone’s house. Mr. Perkins’s house. The man I possibly saw something happen to, and who I was told was visiting his family.

“No,” Sydney says. “Mr. Perkins is coming back for the block party. And that’s his dog.”

The man looks taken aback. “We got this dog at the shelter. Someone had abandoned it—you know some people don’t like dogs. Reminds them of when they could be chased down and returned to slavery. That’s what I heard.”

“It really is a shame,” his wife says, frowning. “The dogs didn’t do anything to deserve that kind of hatred.”

“Whoa,” I cut in, but Country Club Chad talks right over me.

“As for Mr. Perkins, trust me, he was paid more than enough to be able to move somewhere else. Wherever he wanted. I don’t see what the problem is.”

“He wouldn’t move without telling me or anyone else,” Sydney says angrily. “And where would he go? This is his neighborhood. We’re his neighbors! He wouldn’t just leave us.”

The woman steps closer to her husband, as if she’s scared of being attacked.

“This isn’t a very hospitable welcome,” the husband says in the same tone he used to chastise Count. “And if you want to continue, you should know I’m close friends with the chief of police.”

“Sydney, come on,” I say, doing my own Country Club Chad parody. “Let’s go to my place.”

She resists my tug at her arm, then whirls up the steps to her house and down the hall.

“Oh wait. You’re Kim’s latest? Weren’t you at the house last summer?” the husband asks while Sydney’s gone. “She always picks up the most interesting playthings. I guess you do, too.”

“You know Kim?”

His brow wrinkles. “Of course—”

“Charlie! Go make sure the movers don’t break that. It’s been in my family for years and he just dropped it without a second thought!”

Charlie gives me a strange look, the look you give someone when you greet them like a friend and then realize they’re just a similar-looking stranger.

He and his wife head over to the moving truck, tugging Count along with them, and Sydney storms back down the stairs with my duffel bag over her shoulder, various papers shoved haphazardly inside. She glances at Charlie and his wife as they stand next to a giant carved-wood African statue that the movers are about to take up the stairs.

I guide Sydney into my house—Kim’s house—and into the first-floor apartment. Which isn’t a cauldron that hasn’t been cleaned for a month, like mine. Sydney and I push aside the expensive curtains and glare at the people who claim they bought a house that wasn’t for sale.

Terry and Josie wander over with Arwin and Toby, greeting the newcomers with a combination of air kisses and firm handshakes.

Sydney pushes past me and drops onto the couch. “Am I going crazy? Please tell me the truth, because I already thought I was, but this feels like I’m going crazy for real.”

I flex my hands, breathing slowly, trying to collect my thoughts. Mr. Perkins was so kind and welcoming to me, and constant, and now he’s just gone.

“I was at the meeting,” I say. “He had no plans to move, and he wouldn’t leave his dog if he did. If you’re crazy, I’m crazy, too.”

She covers her face with her hands for a few minutes and I don’t push her; a moment of quiet wouldn’t hurt either of us right now.

Eventually, she sighs shakily through her fingers and her head pops up.

“I’m thinking about the tour,” she says, which is maybe the last thing I expect her to say.

“The tour? You still want to do it tomorrow?” I can’t keep the edge of you’re kidding me out of my voice.

“We looked up a lot of history. We talked to a lot of people. And some of those things are ringing bells for me now.”

She looks at me for a long moment, as if waiting for me to guess, but I have no clue what she’s talking about.

“I researched the past and present of Gifford Place. Of Brooklyn. I wanted to throw my middle finger up at Zephyr, at VerenTech, at . . . at you.”

I get what she means, but it still chafes. “At gentrification.”

She nods. “But I hadn’t found the thing that ties it together. The hook, like brownstones, or famous architects, or whatever. And if I’m right, this hook is fucking old and sharp. There are patterns in all of these situations that were just going to be stops on the tour, spiraling out from the beginning.” She pauses, licks her lips. “None of this is happening by chance. How could it?”

“What do you mean?” I ask. I told her I would believe her, but I’d already dealt with Kim’s paranoia—

Kim’s words slam into me.

“There are just so few of us.”

“We need to know whether there’s anything to worry about. Safety-wise.”

They had a private group on OurHood . . . What for?

Charlie knows Kim. Knows me.

Sydney kicks the coffee table that I’ve always hated away from the couch, pulls my duffel between her legs, and starts picking through the mess of papers. When she speaks, her words spill out in a rush.