The Girl from Widow Hills - Megan Miranda Page 0,62
a few extra steps. I hadn’t even known how to lock it until last night, when I ran my fingers along the border, feeling for the latch. The window was unreachable from the ground outside, anyway.
Elyse still hadn’t contacted me, and I couldn’t help but swing by her apartment once more on the way in to work. It stung that she was avoiding me—more than I thought it would, given my history. But whatever had happened between her and Bennett was partly my fault. I’d thought, if I could just talk to her, I could convince her to come back.
It took a little longer to get inside the apartment building this time; apparently, I’d missed the morning rush, both in and out.
This time it was her neighbor across the way who held the door. He didn’t seem to recognize me in his rush, barreling through the doorway in his slacks and button-down.
“Hey, excuse me, have you seen Elyse?”
He did a double take, then leaned against the door as he slid me into context. “She moved out.”
My stomach dropped. “Are you sure?”
He shrugged. “Her apartment’s vacant. That’s all I know. Maybe the lady next door, in 121—Erin, I think?—she might know more. They hung out a lot. I think they worked at the hospital together. She might already be gone for the day, though. We all usually leave around the same time.” He checked his watch, then let the door swing shut behind him.
I couldn’t think of any Erin I knew who worked with us, but if she wasn’t in our department, that wasn’t saying much.
I walked down the hall to Elyse’s apartment. Even the wreath and the doormat were gone. I knocked once just in case, pressed down on the handle, but it was locked.
A door clicked open somewhere down the hall, then closed again. Apartment 121, I thought, but no one was out in the hall. Maybe just a trick of the acoustics, and it was a door around the corner, out of sight.
But I paused in front of apartment 121 on my way out. The doorway was bare, with no personal touches. I knocked twice and swore I could hear movement inside. A presence on the other side of the door. A shadow at the peephole, looking out.
“Hi, I’m looking for Elyse?” I said, in case anyone was there.
But if they were, they didn’t move again. I started to doubt myself, what I’d heard, what I’d felt.
I remembered suddenly how spooked Elyse had been at my house—looking out the window, the fear transferring to her by proximity. And Nathan, asking if I felt safe there. Even he could sense the danger radiating from my place. Could I really blame her for leaving? Wouldn’t I have done the same if I’d had some other place I considered home?
———
EVERYONE TRIED TO ACT normal when I arrived at the hospital. Faces that were either too friendly, or people who averted their gaze entirely, pretending to be absorbed in their phones.
I had found a dead body outside my house, and everyone knew it. Everyone knew I’d been brought in with the detective. I could only imagine the type of gossip swirling through the back channels, whispered between shifts in the lounge.
I stopped in the cafeteria for breakfast and coffee, which wasn’t my normal routine. But I needed the caffeine to focus; I felt slow, a step behind.
This early in the day, there was just a scattering of people around the tables. But I felt their eyes on me, their voices falling to whispers. On my way out of the cafeteria, I passed a nurse from the ER. She did a stutter step in the hall, called out a too-loud “Good morning!” as I passed. As if surprised to see me back at work.
Or maybe I was just projecting. Maybe she didn’t know me at all, was surprised to see anyone in her path. Maybe I was just vaguely familiar to her, as she was to me.
I took the back stairwell again, my steps echoing in the silence. The distance between the click of one door latching and the other opening on the third floor was something I could count in my head. Thirty-two steps. Half a minute.
Inside my wing, the hall was strangely empty. Since I’d stopped for breakfast, I wasn’t as early as I’d been on Friday, before the shift began. By now, the morning rounds were usually in full swing, and the administrative meetings were getting started.