Page 16 of The Seven Year Slip

“So I let her go,” my aunt said, “rather than be burdened with me.”

And Vera moved on. Two kids on her own. She moved back to her hometown to raise them. Went back to college. Became a lawyer. She grew and she changed and she became someone new, as time always made you. And she had not looked back.

All the while, my aunt stayed the same, afraid to keep anything too long in fear it might spoil.

She only ever had two rules in this apartment—one, always take your shoes off by the door.

And two: never fall in love.

Because anyone you met here, anyone the apartment let you find, could never stay.

No one in this apartment ever stayed.

No one ever would.

So why would the apartment give me someonenow? Why not my aunt—the person I wanted to see? Why did it spit me out into a time when she wasn’t there, her apartment loaned out to some charming stranger with the most piercing gray eyes?

It didn’t matter. He’d be gone by the time I went back. The apartment just made a mistake—or I was going nuts. Either way, it didn’t matter because he wasn’t staying.

I found myself walking a little farther than I anticipated, over to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I always ended up here when I was stressed or lost. The timelessness of the portraits, the sweeping colorful landscapes, viewing the world through paint-splotched glasses. I walked through the galleries, and in that time I managed to summon up a little more decorum. And a plan. I got a macchiato from the Italian café across from the Monroe on my way back, and I downed it like a chaser, tossed it into the trash can outside of the building, and marched back toward the last place I really wanted to be.

6

Second Chances

The walk from theelevator to my aunt’s fourth-floor apartment felt exceptionally long, my nerves beginning to mount—sort of the way my nerves always did when I approached her door (“yourdoor,” I could hear Fiona say). The dread of going inside, mixed with the uncertainty of whether or not I’d see that stranger again, twisted my stomach. I really hoped he was gone.

I stopped at B4, and the brassy door knocker stared back at me, the lion head forever frozen in a half scream, half roar.

“Okay, the plan is if he’s there, chase him out with the baseball bat in the closet. If he’s gone, prosper,” I muttered to myself as I fished the keys out of my purse. “Don’t freak out like you did earlier. Breathe.”

Somehow that sounded so much easier than it actually was.

My hands were shaking as I inserted the key into the lock and turned it. I wasn’t the superstitious type of person, but the waffling in my head—Don’t be here, do be here—sounded suspiciously like I was plucking petals off a daisy.

The door creaked open on rusted hinges, and I peeked my head inside.

I didn’thearanyone...

Maybe he was gone.

“Hello?” I called. “Mr.Murder Man?”

No response.

Though if hewerea murderer, would he respond to being called one? I was overthinking things. I slipped inside and closed the door behind me. The apartment was quiet, the afternoon light streaming rays of gold and orange through the taffeta-colored curtains in the living room. Motes of dust danced in the sunlight.

I put my purse on the barstool underneath the counter and checked the rooms, but he—and his stuff—were gone.

My relief was short-lived, however, as I took stock of the apartment properly. The calendar was still set to seven years ago. The portraits on the wall were still there, the ones my aunt had taken down, either given away or destroyed, and the ones I’d stored in the hallway closet. Her bed was in the bedroom instead of mine, her books still haphazardly stacked on the shelves in her study, though I was sure I’d put most of them in boxes already.

And then there was the note—the one written on the back of a receipt in long and scratchy handwriting I didn’t recognize.

Sorry for the intrusion — I

I turned the receipt over. The date read seven years ago, from a bodega on the corner that had since been turned into an expensive furniture boutique—the kind you’d find in farm-chic makeovers with shiplap.

My chest constricted again.

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