Alan’s brow creased. “I do know Audrey. Well, I know who she is. I don’t actually know her.”
“When I got in last night, a friend of hers was at her door, looking for her, saying she’d gone missing.”
Kate expected him to dismiss it, but instead he said: “That doesn’t sound good. She’s not the type to go missing.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I guess I mean she’s always around. I see her around. A lot. I’m sure she’ll turn up.”
Kate had brought a printed map of her neighborhood, but she’d studied it so many times in the previous weeks that she didn’t need to remove it from her bag. She navigated down Bury to Charles Street, where she got a breakfast sandwich and another coffee from a packed Starbucks. The second coffee was a mistake. She was jittery and wired while shopping at an upscale grocery store with tight, congested aisles. She had been planning on getting ingredients for a pasta she liked to make with smoked salmon, but a mild panic had set in, and she bought only a loaf of sourdough bread, some cheddar cheese, milk, and two bottles of red wine. Back out on the street, warm, mild rain had mixed in with the gusty air. It felt good against her skin after the overheated store, and she walked slowly back along Charles, noting, for future reference, a bar that looked well lit and friendly, plus a coffeehouse much less crowded than Starbucks had been.
She deliberately walked past the gaslit side street that would take her back up the hill to Bury Street, and continued to the outskirts of the Public Garden. Her groceries were heavy, but she wanted to at least see the famous park. The rain was picking up, and several parents were ushering their kids away from a line of bronze ducks. Willow trees shimmered by the pond. She almost entered the park, but decided against it. She was here for six months and there would be time.
Kate swung through the doors into the lobby. She introduced herself to the doorman, Sanibel, a thin man with high cheekbones and ink-black hair. He offered to help her with her bags. She said, “No, thanks,” just as a white cat that had been perched on the lobby desk jumped to the floor and rubbed against Kate’s shin.
“That’s Sanders,” the doorman said.
“Does Sanders belong to you?”
“No, no. He belongs to Mrs. Halperin. Upstairs.” He indicated with a fractional move of his head the direction of Kate’s own apartment. “He likes to go everywhere, though. All over. Unlike Mrs. Halperin.”
Kate walked up the stairs, Sanders following her. Carol Valentine had mentioned Florence Halperin; she had the other apartment on Kate’s wing. Passing the door, Kate noticed it was cracked open, presumably for Sanders, but the cat followed Kate down to her own door and managed to slide into the apartment, even with Kate trying to block the way with her foot.
She put away her groceries, then went and found Sanders. He had leapt onto one of the windowsills and was looking out at the rainy day. Kate scooped him up, expecting resistance, but he arranged his back paws on Kate’s forearm and his front paws on her shoulder, and purred quietly into her neck. Kate, usually ambivalent toward cats, felt a surge of affection. She carried him to the hallway, saying, “Wrong apartment, Sanders,” and dropped him back onto the hall carpet. She quickly shut the door as he padded away.
Kate went to the bedroom and got the sketchbook that she’d brought with her from London. It was brand-new, a way to commemorate the beginning of her time in a new country. She removed a charcoal pencil from a fresh pack, then sat down on the lushly carpeted floor and thought about trying to draw Sanders. Instead, she drew Alan Cherney’s face, getting it just about perfect. Something was a little off, the eyes spaced too close together, the hairline a little too low, so she pulled out a kneaded eraser and fixed it. It took her longer to fix the sketch than it had to draw it, but then it was him. She wrote his name, and the date under it, then added boston, massachusetts. She almost exclusively drew portraits, and her sketchbooks were comprised of the faces of people she had recently met. She had stacks of these notebooks, the earliest ones from grade school. Flipping through them—something she often