Page 21 of The New Couple in 5B

I seal the final box and look around the empty space, the scuffed wood floors, the big windows. It was the first place that belonged to me alone until Chad moved in. I’ve been happy here.Wehave. I’m sad to say goodbye to the life we lived within these walls, on this slanted floor.

Chad’s banging around in the bedroom, humming one of the songs from his play. My head is aching and I’m trying not to be cranky.

The truth is that instead of being excited about the move, and thrilled that Max has made a big offer on the new book—bigger than I expected—I’ve been tense, sleepless. When sleep does come, I’ve been having nightmares.

I chase the boy from the basement through a labyrinth. I know it’s my job to save him, but he keeps slipping around corners, a wraith, laughing.

Chad in his witch costume, holds me down, his grip like a vise, his fingers sharp and hard as claws. He sinks his teeth into my neck and drinks my blood, while the strange woman from the theater watches with that ghoulish grin.

I know it’s partially Sarah’s call that’s to blame. I wish I could say that her prophetic dreams came out of nowhere, that she was unstable or prone to delusions. But this is my family. Sarah, like my grandmother before her, was what my father called a dreamer, the visions she had while she slept very often coming to pass.

In the town where I grew up, my father was known as Preacher. He delivered his fiery sermons in the barn behind our house—his own brand of religion, cherry-picking from all the grand traditions. He spoke in tongues—total gibberish I would later learn as I started to study languages. And people from all over the county brought their sick for my father’s healing touch.

Holy Spirit, help us!he’d yell after whispering to the demons that were tormenting the ill. The congregation would respond in kind. And it would go back and forth, back and forth, a strange echo until my father moved on to the next.

I’ve traveled far in every way possible from my childhood hell, but it’s still with me. Since my sister’s call, I’m pulled back into that time, that little-girl self where I didn’t know what was real and what was lies. Now I keep hearing Sarah’s small, frightened voice on the phone, her words.

I’m angry—at my family, at myself. I’ve moved away from that town, my father and his nonsense. I’ve traveled and educated myself out of my childish beliefs. Why does it still cling?

Chad has suggested gently that I go back on the sleeping pills I used to take when we first met. But so far, I’ve refused. I don’t want to go back to that crutch. And besides, there’s something about the medication that has me mentally dull during the day, making the work of writing and researching feel like dragging a boulder behind me up a hill. Writing a book is struggle enough; I don’t need the extra weight.

One last look around the empty space, then I wander over to the window to see the yoga mom feeding her baby in his high chair. I’m going to miss them, as well as the painter, and the young office girls. They’re strangers, of course, but a familiar feature of every day. Our views from apartment 5B are expansive—downtown out the south-facing windows from our bedroom, uptown and the gleaming Chrysler Building to the north. We can watch the sun go down from the dining room, which looks west.

It seems like too much of a luxury. But I’ve done the math. With what we have, including the deposit, which I still haven’t asked Chad about, his earnings from the theater, my advance, which should come soon, though publishers notoriously are glacially slow to pay, we can swing it. For a while. Chad didn’t get the commercial he’d auditioned for, but I know he’ll get something soon. I can feel it.

Chad comes up to hug me from behind. “This was our first place together,” he says, surprising me by sounding sentimental now when for the past three weeks he’s been singing about howwe’re moving on up, channeling his favorite ’80s sitcom. “I carried you over the threshold after our wedding.”

“And the bathroom ceiling leaks,” I remind him, and myself, because I’m feeling sentimental, too. “And the floor slants. And don’t forget about the mice.”

“Still,” he says, spinning me around. “I’ve loved it here—with you.”

“We could stay,” I say, only half kidding.

“Hell, no,” he says, leaning back. “Your castle awaits, my princess.”

A monster in a castle, drinking your blood.

Stop it.

“What?” he says, laughing, I guess, at my expression, which he says sometimes goes dark. “What are you thinking?”

“Nothing,” I say. “Just a lot of work ahead today.”

“Today is the first day of the rest of our lives,” he says with a dramatic sweep of his arm. He’s the king of the well-placed cliché. But he’s right. It feels momentous.

“Is that everything, miss?” a mover asks me. The guys from Two Hunks and a Truck are, as billed, quite hunky and as muscle-bound as would be required to do this job.

“I think so,” I answer. I release a sigh. “Yes, that’s it. Thank you.”

Item by item, they’ve expertly navigated our meager belongings down five flights of stairs. And now it’s all gone. It strikes me that if something happens to that truck on the way uptown, we won’t own a single thing except the empty apartment and the clothes on our backs.

Abi is expecting them on the other side, has the service elevator ready and waiting.

When Chad joins me in the living room, he holds a little purple fabric pouch in his hand. It’s dusty, tied with twine, a small tawny feather dangling from the end.

I suppress the urge to knock it from his hand.

“What’s this?” he asks.

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