Buford is yowling the second she opens the apartment door, so she feeds him a can of Iams before she heads into her room. Cat vomit is drying in several places on the bed, and it’s green-tinged. She spies the reason—the small bouquet of spring flowers sitting on the dresser. They’re pretty, but not exactly romantic. Maybe Derek isn’t a dozen-red-roses kind of guy. Her heart palpitates as she reaches for the small white envelope nestled into the flowers. Please please please, let these be from him. The penmanship on the card inside the envelope is elegant—obviously someone at the flower shop has beautiful handwriting—but the message is depressing. And it’s not from Derek.
Happy birthday to my sweet girl. Miss you. Love, Mom
The guilt consumes Kenzie then. Her birthday isn’t for another four months, which can only mean that her mom is getting worse. Sharon Li has been a resident of the Oak Meadows Assisted Living Facility in Yakima for two years now, and her early-onset Alzheimer’s seems to be progressing at a more rapid pace. This is the second bouquet of birthday flowers she’s received from her mother in the past three months.
The cat jumps up onto the dresser, nearly knocking over the vase. She catches it just in time.
“Buford!” she snaps. The cat swishes his tail arrogantly in return. She can see where he’s been chewing leaves, and there are bite marks on several of the stems. “This is why you barfed on my bed, you little shit. And now I have to do laundry again when I just did it the other day.”
She shouldn’t be yelling at the cat. Right now, he’s the only friend she has left. She gathers up the soiled bedsheets, shoving them into a cloth laundry bag. It only takes up half the space, so she empties the few items from her hamper into it as well, then heads back down the stairs.
The laundry room is in the “bowels” of the building, which is the nickname Tyler assigned the basement, not because it stinks, but because it’s dark, damp, and you’re happiest when you’re coming out. Also, it’s spooky. The basement is kept dimmer than the rest of the building, and there’s a long hallway from the stairwell to the laundry room, filled with shadows and strange clanking noises that make her nervous. Once again she feels her skin prickling with the sensation of being watched, but when she turns around, there’s nobody there.
The laundry room itself, at least, is brightly lit. She darts inside, exhaling when the door shuts behind her. There’s a washing machine free at the far end, and she empties the contents of her bag into it and sticks her Coinamatic card into the pay slot. The little light beside the card reader flashes red. It’s supposed to turn green.
“Shit,” she says.
The digital display shows a card balance of two dollars. It’s $3.25 for a regular wash, which means she’ll have to dash back upstairs to get her credit card to reload it using the Coinamatic machine in the corner of the room. But her Visa and MasterCard are both maxed out, and she hasn’t used Derek’s cash to pay them down yet. And of course none of the machines accept actual bills. Sometimes technology sucks. You can’t even do basic things without a credit card these days.
“Shit,” she says to herself again, trying to decide on the best course of action.
“A little short on funds?” a raspy voice says, and she nearly screams.
She whirls around to find Ted Novak, the superintendent who lives on the first floor, standing behind her. She didn’t notice him come in, or hear his footsteps as he crossed the laundry room floor toward her. He doesn’t appear to be doing much of anything, and he’s holding nothing—no phone, no hamper, no fabric softener, no keys. He’s simply standing there, staring at her, like a fucking psychopath.
She doesn’t like Ted. She’s never liked Ted. From the day she moved in, he’s given her the creeps for reasons Kenzie can’t quite articulate. He doesn’t say or do anything inappropriate. He doesn’t make suggestive comments or tell offensive jokes. He doesn’t leer. But when you’re talking to him, there’s … something missing. A light in his eyes that should be there but isn’t. If he smiles, which is rare, it doesn’t feel genuine. And if he laughs—which is even rarer—the sound is canned, almost forced, like he’s only doing it because social protocol