a bite of pizza, stalling. My hope is that Nick will lose patience and move to a different topic. When he doesn’t, I’m forced to swallow and admit the sad truth.
“I’m between jobs at the moment,” I say. “I was laid off recently and haven’t been able to find something else.”
“No harm in that,” Nick replies. “You could even look at it as a blessing in disguise. What would you really like to be doing?”
“I . . . I don’t actually know. I’ve never given it much thought.”
“Never?” Nick says, dropping his slice of pizza onto his plate to punctuate his surprise.
I have, of course. When I was young and hopeful and encouraged to ponder such things. At age ten, I wanted to be a ballerina or a veterinarian, blissfully unaware of the rigors specific to both professions. In college, I chose English lit as my major with the idea that maybe I’d become an editor or a teacher. When I graduated, following Chloe from Pennsylvania to New York with a mountain of debt weighing me down, I couldn’t just wait and choose what I wanted to do. I had to take whatever job paid the bills and put food on the table.
“Tell me about you,” I tell Nick, desperate to change the subject. “Did you always want to be a surgeon?”
“I didn’t have much of a choice,” he says. “It’s what was expected of me.”
“But what would you really like to be doing?”
Nick cracks a smile. “Touché.”
“Turnabout is fair play,” I say.
“Then I’ll rephrase my answer. I wanted to be a surgeon because that’s what I was exposed to from a very early age. I come from a long line of surgeons, beginning with my great-grandfather. All my life, I knew how proud they were of their work. They helped people. They saved people on the verge of being lost. It’s like they were mystics—bringing people back from the dead. Looking at it that way, I was all too happy to join the family business.”
“And business must have been booming if they could afford an apartment in the Bartholomew.”
“I’m very fortunate,” Nick says. “But honestly, this place never felt special. It is. I know that now. But growing up, it was just home, you know? When you’re a kid, you don’t realize your situation is different from everyone else’s. It wasn’t until I went away to college that I realized how unusual it was to grow up here. That’s when I finally understood that most people don’t get to live in a place like the Bartholomew.”
I pick a slice of pepperoni off my pizza and pop it into my mouth. “That’s why I can’t understand why someone like Ingrid would want to leave.”
“I’m surprised you went to Greta,” Nick says. “I didn’t think they knew each other. Come to think of it, I didn’t realize you knew Ingrid.”
“Only slightly,” I say. “You didn’t know her at all, did you?”
“We met briefly. Just a quick hello the day she moved in. I might have seen her around the building once or twice after that, but it was nothing substantial.”
“She and I made plans to hang out. And now . . .”
“Her sudden departure has you concerned.”
“A little,” I admit. “The way she left strikes me as weird.”
“I don’t think it’s weird, necessarily,” Nick says before taking another sip of his beer. “Apartment sitters have left before, you know.”
“Without notice in the middle of the night?”
“Not quite like that. But, for one reason or another, they don’t think it’s the right thing for them to be doing. The person who was in 12A before you did that.”
“Erica Mitchell?”
Nick looks at me, surprised. “How do you know about her?”
“Ingrid mentioned her,” I say. “She said she left two months early.”
“That sounds about right. She was here about a month before telling Leslie she wasn’t comfortable with the rules. Leslie wished her well, and Erica moved out. I suspect it was the same with Ingrid. Clearly, she didn’t like it here and wanted to leave. Which I understand. The Bartholomew’s not for everyone. It can be—”
“Creepy?”
He arches a brow. “Interesting word choice. I was going to say this place can be unusual. Do you really think it’s creepy?”
Only the wallpaper, I think.
“Slightly,” I say, adding, “I’ve heard things.”
“Let me guess,” Nick says. “That it’s cursed.”
It reminds me of the article, still unread, that Chloe sent me. “The Curse of the Bartholomew.” Only Ingrid used a different word to describe this place.