Page 43 of Lock Every Door

“I’m a very different woman now than when I wrote it. Think back to when you were younger. Think about your tastes and behavior and habits. You’ve changed since then. Evolved. We all do. Which means there are aspects of that younger version of yourself that you’d probably detest now.”

I nod, thinking of my mother and store-brand cereal.

“When I wrote that book, I was so in need of fantasy that I failed to do the one thing all good writers are supposed to do—tell the truth,” Greta says. “I was a liar, and that book is my biggest lie.”

I down the rest of the wine, preparing myself for something I never thought I’d have to do—defend a book to its own author.

“You’re forgetting that readers need fantasy, too,” I say. “My sister and I used to lie on her bed, readingHeart of a Dreamerand picturing ourselves in Ginny’s shoes. The book showed us there was life outside our tiny, dying town. The book gave us hope. Even now, after all that hope has been stripped away, I still loveHeart of a Dreamerand I remain grateful that you wrote it. Sure, the Manhattan in the book doesn’t exist in real life. And no, few people in this city end up getting the happy ending Ginny received. But fiction can be an escape, which is why we need idealized versions of New York City. It balances out the crowded, gritty, heartbreaking real thing.”

“But what about the real world?” Greta says.

“That sister I mentioned? She disappeared when I was seventeen.” I know I should stop talking. But now that the wine has loosened my tongue, I find that I can’t. “My parents died when I was nineteen. So, frankly, I’ve had enough of the real world.”

Greta lifts her hand, places her palm to her cheek, and spends agood ten seconds sizing me up. Caught in her stare, I freeze, embarrassed that I’ve said too much.

“You strike me as a gentle soul,” she says.

I’ve never thought of myself as gentle. Fragile is more like it. Prone to bruising.

“I don’t know. I guess I am.”

“Then you need to be careful,” she says. “This place isn’t kind to gentle souls. It chews them up and spits them out.”

“Do you mean New York or the Bartholomew?”

Greta keeps staring. “Both,” she says.

15

Greta’s words stay with me as I climb the stairs from the tenth floor to the twelfth. Not just the part about being chewed up and spit out but the reason Ingrid came to see her. Why would Ingrid be asking about the Bartholomew and its past? Orallegedlysordid past, as Greta had deemed it.

It...it scares me.

That’s what Ingrid had said about the Bartholomew. And I believed her. That little stutter seemed to me like a confession on the verge of being released. As if Ingrid was trying to tell me something she wasn’t sure could be said out loud. I dismissed it only because she did, chalking it up to loneliness and her free spirit chafing against the Bartholomew’s many rules.

Now I suspect she was more frightened than she let on.

Because departing without warning in the middle of the night isn’t how people leave a place when they don’t think they’re in danger.

It’s how they leave when they’re terrified.

Stop.

Think.

Assess the situation.

Which is that it doesn’t really matter why Ingrid left the Bartholomew. Right now, my concern is finding out where she is and knowing that she’s safe. Because I have a worrisome feeling she’s not. Call it a post-Jane hunch.

I pause on the eleventh-floor landing to check my phone. Ingrid still hasn’t read my texts. Which means she also likely hasn’t listened to the voicemail I left. I was hoping she would have responded by now, even if it was just to tell me to stop bothering her. That would be better than nothing.

I shove the phone back into my pocket and am about to continue up the steps when Dylan, the Bartholomew’s other apartment sitter, leaves 11B. He’s dressed similarly to yesterday. Same baggy jeans. Same black discs in his ears. The only thing that’s changed is his T-shirt. Today it’s Nirvana.

My presence on his floor clearly surprises him. His eyes widen behind a veil of floppy black hair.

“Hey,” he says. “You lost?”

“Trying to find someone, actually,” I say. “Did you know Ingrid at all?”

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