Page 34 of The New Couple in 5B

“I’d rather not discuss it over the phone.” She’s lowered her voice to a raspy whisper, and a tension creeps into my shoulders.

This is a bad idea. There’s something wrong with her. I am about to decline when my eyes fall on the box with her name on it; I hauled it up from the basement yesterday. It reminds me that she’s a person in pain. That there’s a letter in there from a father she thought didn’t love her, but who did in his own way. She’s family, I guess. Also, I’m looking to repair that bad feeling between us.

“I have something for you, too,” I venture.

I expect her to ask me what I have, but she doesn’t.

“I’ll text you an address,” she says instead. “Can you come later this afternoon? Around three?”

“Okay,” I agree.

If I called Chad, he’d tell me not to go. But I do want to deliver the box to her. And—whatcouldshe have to say about my husband?

His childhood was difficult. There’s darkness there; I know that much. His parents’ deaths, another terrible incident before that—which we almost never discuss. Chad rarely has anything to say about his growing up in New Jersey. It always seems like he’d rather forget that time of his life. Typical. Suburban. Boring. Those are the words he uses most often when strangers ask, even though that’s not exactly accurate. Painful. Tragic. That’s more like it.

I decide that I’ll lug the box to lunch, then meet her after.

“Hey, Rosie. Don’t tell anyone in the building that you’re meeting me.” She releases a deep breath. “You can’t trust the people closest to you.”

“Uh,” I say stupidly. Before I can ask why and what she means, she hangs up. A second later an address comes through via text—oh, no. Looks like someplacewayuptown. Like Inwood, or even the Bronx. I do not have long cab rides in my budget, and I’m not hauling that box onto the train.

That’s a bit of hike, I text back.Can we pick another place?

But there’s no answer. She doesn’t pick up when I decide to call.

There it is again, that weird sound from the intercom.

My grandmother used to call it the tingle. That feeling in your nerve endings when something dark is on the horizon. Your body knows; it feels the energy like a dowsing rod.

I glance at the time on my phone and realize the morning is slipping away. Forcing myself to get back to work, I continue to sift through Ivan’s box, making notes, writing down questions. There’s a lot here and it’s going to take more than a couple of hours to read it all.

Near the bottom of the box, I find another photograph—this one of the church that stood here and burned down before the Windermere was built. With its brownstone facade, vaulted doorways, towering steeples, it sits freestanding in its place on Park Avenue, small but stately. The buildings that now sit on either side of the Windermere were not yet constructed.

In the grainy black-and-white image, on the church steps a congregation gathers, well-heeled women in long dresses and elaborate hats, men in suits. I find myself staring at it, trying to discern faces, but the image, taken at a distance, is fuzzy and out of focus.

That buzz, that curiosity that has me digging through the past, is a white noise in my head.

Those people, like the Winters, each of them leading lives that seemed monumentally important—all their dreams, desires, loves, losses, all their pain, joy, children born, wars endured, tears shed, laughter—all gone now. This grainy image is all that remains. More than one hundred years later, no one alive even remembers them. I feel that deep writer’s urge to tell their stories. Because in the end, that’s what our lives are—stories that we tell ourselves and each other. And those stories are all that remain after we’re gone.

I lose myself in my research, forgetting about Dana and what she thinks she might know about Chad. Deep in the flow, my morning passes quickly. When I notice the time again, it’s almost noon.

Oh, shit. Max. As I close my notebook, hustle to get ready and head across town for our lunch, I’m still undecided about whether to make the trip uptown to see Dana. Finally, I decide to lug the box in the elevator foyer with me, and press the call button.

Abi comes quickly, and he immediately rushes to pick up the box and carries it to the elevator. He doesn’t seem to look at it or be curious about what might be inside. I think about our strange late-night conversation.

“Big meeting with your editor today?” he asks, clanking the metal gate shut.

He must clock my surprise. “Mr. Lowan mentioned it this morning.”

“Oh, yes,” I say, forcing a polite smile. Another introvert nightmare, to be daily asked about your comings and goings, to have strangers inquiring after things that are none of their business.

“I’m sure it will go well,” he says. A scent wafts from him, something fresh and herbal.

Are you?I want to ask. But of course, he’s just being cordial. I decide to be the same.

“Thank you, Abi.”

As the elevator creeps slowly down the shaft, the silence awkwardly expands. There’s a strident ring that indicates someone else needs the elevator. The floor numbers stenciled onto the shaft pass us by—4, 3. Abi brings the elevator to stop on 2.

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