Page 123 of The New Couple in 5B

She stays silent, watching me.

“Ella, where’s Chad?” I try again when she doesn’t speak. “Please. Do you know where he is?”

But she’s not listening.

“When Miles died, I was so distraught, so tortured by my pain. I thought that maybe Willa had something to do with Miles’s death. He saw them, you know, Abi and Willa, fooling around in the basement. But he was always a little troublemaker, telling lies and making up stories. So I didn’t believe him.”

“I’m so sorry, Ella,” I say and mean it. “That loss must have been crushing.”

“You can’t understand,” she says. “Because you don’t have a child.”

I take the blow, try not to let it show how much it hurts.

“But the police ruled Miles’s death an accident,” she continues. “The elevator malfunctioned. And the truth was I wasn’t watching. The doors opened and he just ran, assuming the elevator was waiting for him. It was my fault, a failure to protect my darling boy.”

“It was an accident.”

She shakes her head. “I sank into darkness. I wanted to die with him. But I couldn’t—because of our Lilian.”

There. I work one of my hands free, sliding it slowly from the loosened binding. I start wiggling at my ankles, slowly.

“I lashed out in my grief. I told Paul what Miles saw. That she threatened my little boy, made him swear to keep her dirty secret.”

She pauses, draws in and releases a slow breath. “I was in so much pain, I guess I just wanted to cause others pain, as well. I didn’t imagine what he would do. I hope you can believe that. I just wanted them to divorce and leave.”

“I’m so sorry, Ella,” I say again. “You must have been in so much pain.”

This time she looks at me surprised, then closes her eyes.

“Ella.”

She goes on, “And the apartment went into probate—since there was no one to inherit it. Finally, it went to an estate auction and Ivan bought it out from under us.”

Ivan told me that it languished on the market for years, no one willing to buy it because of the murder-suicide, that he got it for a fraction of its worth because he wasn’t concerned about death and dying, and all the ways people hurt each other. He’d seen it all. He never mentioned an auction or that he’d outbid the Aldridges. Memory is tricky, though. Which of them is right? Does it even matter? The fact is that the Aldridges lost the apartment again.

“Then Ivan moved in, and he was so often gone, so quiet when he was here. It was almost like there was no one next door. We had a key to his place so that we could check on things and bring mail in for him. And he didn’t mind if Charles spent time there once in a while. So it was almost like we had the place back.”

She goes quiet a moment, and I stop moving, afraid that she’ll know I’m trying to get loose.

“When Lilian befriended Dana a few years ago, the two of them struck a deal. We knew the apartment would come to Dana in her inheritance—someday. It was agreed that Lilian and Robert would buy it from her because Dana had no interest in living there, and she needed the money. Artists always need money.”

Her gaze is blank and distant, as if she’s ever more lost in her reverie. I stay quiet, working the bindings, feeling some blood flow come back to my hands and my feet.

“And, finally, finally, it would be back in our family. You’re too young to understand legacy, what you want to leave behind for your children, what you want to survive after you’re gone. This building, this apartment, it’s ours, always has been.

“What a joy it was to imagine Lilian right next door when she was in town. And when we died, we’d leave our place to her and finally she could put the two units back together. We couldknowthat, even if it didn’t happen in our lifetime.”

It’s just an apartment. Just floor and walls and windows. But no, it’s not just that. Not to her, not even to me.

Ella looks at me coldly.

“And Miles would always have a home here. There would always be family for him. He wouldn’t be alone after we were gone.”

I wonder what Dr. Black would say about this, or Arthur Alpern. We cling to things we’ve lost, don’t we? To the people who’ve left us. It’s that clinging I think that forces us to do horrible things.

“It was settled,” she says. “And not long after then Ivan fell ill. We were sorry for poor Ivan, of course. We never wished him harm. But it seemed like the place was back within reach.”

I have a horrible thought. Chad said that Betty Cartwright almost gave Ivan an incorrect pain dose. Ella was watching Ivan the night he died. Could Ella have done that, to speed his passing?

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