“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t talk to fans.”
I thought the ice in my voice would make him shrivel, or tell me to fuck off, I’m just trying to help you. Instead, he looked confused. “Why?”
I opened my mouth. Closed it. If talking to a fan was a betrayal, the betrayal had happened. It was too late to turn back.
“I don’t know,” I said finally.
“Then how about getting over it? I don’t think you have anyone else you can go to with this.” He said it gently, but I felt pinpricks of shame anyway.
“That’s not true. I could go stay at my friend Lana’s.” I probably could, too, but Lana already lived with two other sculptors and half a klezmer band in a stuffed Gowanus flat. And calling her my friend was pushing it.
“But you didn’t go to Lana,” he said. “You came to me.”
In that moment, I wondered when the last time was that I’d made eye contact with someone for this long. Someone who wasn’t Ella. I wanted so badly to not need him, but the idea of going back out into the city alone sent a feeling of cold desolation blowing through me. In my mind Harold’s apartment was an alien landscape—something had passed through it, something that didn’t belong. I couldn’t be alone there with that feeling.
I hated needing something from someone when I had absolutely nothing to offer back. You’d think, after the upbringing I’d had, I’d at least be used to it.
“Fine,” I managed, relief crashing in. “Sorry it’s a school night.”
Finch looked at me like I’d said something colossally stupid—which I guess I had, but it still rankled—then sprinted to his bedroom door. He slid through like he didn’t want me to see inside, which made me reassess my guess at what he was hiding in there. Bikini babes on Ferraris, lots of suspicious balled-up socks?
Or, wait. That was the bad boy from a teen comedy, not a rich New York kid with a Vonnegut quote tattooed up his arm.
I had to admit, I liked Finch’s tattoo.
A few minutes later, he came out in a blue zip-up, a beat leather bag I recognized from school over his shoulder. “You ready?”
I wished he didn’t sound so excited, and I told him so.
“I sound excited?”
“Yeah, you do.” I counted to three as I breathed in the peace, breathed out the rage, like Ella had been making me do ever since I broke a baton over a girl’s head in kindergarten. It helped, a little. “This isn’t an adventure, okay? This isn’t an Althea Proserpine thing. My mom is missing, maybe.”
“Oh.” He looked down. “I really don’t mean to be excited. I’m just glad to be going somewhere with you.”
Are you for real? I wanted to say, but some self-preserving instinct kept the words back. I did have some control.
We traced my steps back to Harold’s, where the front desk was still unmanned.
“That’s another thing—I haven’t seen our doorman since this morning. Weird, right?”
“Definitely weird,” Finch muttered, his eyes zagging around the lobby. Now that we were in the building he was doing this thing where he walked in front of me with one hand thrown behind him, like someone was about to start shooting arrows at us.
“Can you let me … dude, I have to open the elevator.”
He fell back, sheepish, and I applied the elevator key. Harold’s elevator was a gas station bathroom compared to Finch’s, I couldn’t help but note.
We rode up in prickling silence. When the doors slid open, my body was tensed and humming. I was ready to scream, or gasp, or see my mom, my mouth already forming the words I’d yell at her for making me worry. But the foyer was empty.
“God, that smell,” Finch whispered.
Then I saw something that sent me flying out onto the marble: Harold’s briefcase, slung onto the table in the entrance hall.
All at once I felt a rush of giddy relief expanding in my chest, coupled with crushing embarrassment that I’d made Finch come here. “Hello?” I called out. “Mom? Harold?”
Silence, then the rapid sound of approaching feet. Harold came careening around the corner, his shaved head flushed. I never thought I’d be so happy to see him.
“Harold! Where’s my mo—”
The words died in my throat. Harold was holding a gun so blunt and iconic it looked like a toy, and he was pointing it square at my chest. Finch made a strangled sound in his throat, grabbed me roughly, and pulled me behind him.
“What the hell, Harold,” I gasped, pushing past Finch. “It’s me!”
“I know who it is,” he said. His voice was high, his lips so tight there was a taut ring of white around them. I could smell him from where I stood—cologne and a sickly sweat.
My heart chugged, turning itself over like a broken-down engine. “Harold. Harold, where’s my mom?”
“You looked at me like I’m the monster,” he said.
“What?” My mouth was so dry I could hear my tongue.
“Was any of it real? Ella—did she really…” He made a choked sound.
All the bad luck I’d ever had was focused into one dark point, the black muzzle of the gun. “Please,” I said. “Please. What did you do to her? Where is she?”
“Do to her? I did everything to make her happy—and you, treating me like I don’t belong in my own home, like I shouldn’t be allowed to touch her.” The gun was drooping, like his arm was a dying stem.
You shouldn’t, I thought. But it was a dim, reflexive thing; the gun still hovered at his waist. If it went off, he’d hit my knees.
“And now this,” he said. “Now you bring this into my life. My daughter could’ve been killed.”
“Killed?” I remembered Audrey’s phone, abandoned on the bed. “Are they hurt? Ella and Audrey?”
“I’m supposed to believe you care?” He walked forward and took me roughly by the shoulder, gun still hanging from his other hand. I froze. Harold hadn’t touched me since we hugged to make Ella happy at the wedding. I felt Finch go tense as Harold glared down at me with his sad blue pirate eyes. He shook me, like I was something he was checking for leaks.
“Don’t touch me,” I gasped, twisting away, right as Finch grabbed Harold’s arm.
“Get away from her,” he said through gritted teeth.
Harold made an anguished sound and lifted the gun. Finch and I startled back. “I loved her. I loved her so much, and she lied to me every day.”
“Sir,” Finch said, and his voice was strong and even. “Point the gun at the floor. We’re going to turn around and leave, right now. Just please point the gun at the floor.”
“We’re not going anywhere,” I said, my voice seesawing like the deck of a ship. “Not until he tells me where she is!”
There was a clicking of heels on tile, and Audrey pulled up behind her dad, clutching a stuffed duffel to her chest and looking drawn behind her makeup mask.
“Dad,” she said. All the sharp laughter and shiny bullshit had gone out of her voice. She sounded very tired. “Put that thing down.”
For a second he didn’t seem to hear her. Then he dropped the gun to the table with a hard clack that made my back teeth hurt.