“Let me make a few phone calls and get back to you,” she said.
The apartment was located on a narrow street that wound up the hill behind the football stadium, the top floor of a narrow wooden structure nestled in between the towering trees of Strawberry Canyon. The landlady, Mrs. Crespi, was a friend of Kelly’s mother and was more than happy to rent it to me. She warned us that parking could be troublesome on game days and that the sound of the cannon they fired after touchdowns could be startling at first. It had about forty wooden stairs, and when we reached the top, Mrs. Crespi opened the door and stepped aside so I could enter first. Not even eight hundred square feet, it was like a tree house. Kelly huffed next to me and said, “You might want to think about grocery delivery. I can’t imagine carrying anything heavier than a purse all the way up here.”
“I have three tenants, professional women like yourself,” Mrs. Crespi said. “I charge fifteen hundred dollars a month, but that includes all utilities. If you decide to take it, I’ll need first and last for security deposit. And the furniture can stay since it’s difficult to move things in and out of here. I can have it professionally cleaned if you like.”
My attorneys had negotiated a monthly stipend, although it wasn’t much. I’d have to sell all my jewelry and find a job, but I was looking forward to the chance to be on my own. To earn my own way. “That should work,” I said, stepping into the living room and kitchen space.
Even though I knew it was going to be small, the fact that nearly the entire west side of the room was glass made the apartment seem bigger. A sage-green couch faced the window, with a small TV mounted on a stand next to the front door. Behind us, a tiny kitchen with a patch of counter space for food prep, a stove, and a refrigerator took up the back of the room. Beyond that was a short hallway leading toward a bathroom and tiny bedroom.
I walked to the window. A blanket of green treetops swooped down the hill, with the university buildings tucked in between them, glowing like half-buried treasures in the late afternoon light. Beyond that, San Francisco Bay shimmered, the sun casting the city skyline and bridge in the distance as a silhouette. “I love it,” I said, turning to face Kelly and Mrs. Crespi.
A smile illuminated Mrs. Crespi’s wrinkled face. “I’m so glad.” She opened the file she was holding and handed me a lease agreement. “You can move in whenever you’re ready.”
I took the paperwork from her and grinned. “I’m ready now,” I said, and turned back to the view again.
* * *
“Do you want me to pack up everything in the bathroom, or do you want to go through the drawers yourself?” Petra stands in the doorway to my office, and I turn from the box I’ve been sorting through to face her. When I’d returned to New York, she had been the one to pick me up from the airport. She’d waited until we were safely in the back of the town car she’d hired before falling apart.
“This feels like a dream,” she said through her tears. “When I saw that the plane had crashed…” She trailed off and pressed her fingers to her eyes, taking a deep breath. “And then you show up on CNN and eviscerate that motherfucker.”
It turned out, I hadn’t copied her phone number down wrong. “I had it disconnected,” Petra had explained when I’d asked why it didn’t work. “After I talked to you at the airport, I worried Rory might do some kind of reverse directory assistance and figure out who it belonged to. So I got a new one. But then the news…” She’d shrugged, unable to continue, tears tumbling down her cheeks again.
I close the lid on one box and slide another one toward me. “Pack it all,” I tell her now. “The lotions and makeup are expensive. It’d be stupid to throw them away.”
“I still think you should stay here,” Petra says. “This is your home and you’re entitled to it. Maybe not all the contents.” She glances at the Rodin statue. “But you should fight for what’s yours.”
“I don’t want it,” I say, turning back to the box and sealing it closed. “I don’t need all this space.”