When I get home in the late afternoon, I find Margot sitting on a barstool with her e-reader lit up on the kitchen counter. Even though I’m dying to know how someone like Margot ends up reading books about big blue aliens and their inadequate loincloths, I resist the urge to bring it up again. Clearly, it embarrasses her more than it should. We all have our things, and I’m not one to judge.
She glances over her shoulder and greets me with a quiet “Hey” while simultaneously closing the cover over her screen.
“Hey,” I say back.
“I was going to text you. I’m leaving in a few minutes.”
My eyes drop to the freshly laundered black dress she’s wearing and high heels that look sorely out of place for a Sunday afternoon.
“You could have kept the clothes I gave you,” I tell her, recalling the way she wobbled on those heels even before she was drunk the other night.
“Thanks, but I don’t think I should show up in another guy’s clothes. Jeremy told me he would be out of the apartment by five o’clock, but for obvious reasons, I don’t really trust anything he says right now.”
I nod, although that raises more questions than it answers.
“How are you getting home?” I ask.
“I ordered a Lyft. It should be here in ten minutes.”
“Cancel it.”
“What? Why?” she asks.
“I’ll drive you.”
She shakes her head. “You don’t need to do that.”
“I want to,” I assure her. “Besides, I’m not doing anything else.”
It’s true. It’s also true that I’m not going to let her walk into that apartment alone if there’s even a remote chance that herasshole ex-boyfriend didn’t make good on his promise to move out.
Margot knows me pretty well, so she knows better than to argue with me on this.
“Okay,” she relents, pulling up the app and canceling her ride.
Twenty minutes later, we arrive at Margot’s apartment complex. She tries to tell me that I don’t need to come up, but I disagree and follow her up the stairs to her front door. She pauses with her key in the lock, her shoulders stiff as she turns to me with an imploring look.
“Wait out here for a minute, okay? If Jeremy is still in there and he sees you, it’s going to be a problem. I’ll come back for you in a minute then you can do your security sweep or whatever it is that you think you’re going to do.”
I nod reluctantly. “If I hear yelling, I’m coming in.”
“Understood.”
Margot turns the knob and slowly opens the door, stepping inside. She leaves it slightly ajar behind her, and I wait patiently for her to come back.
A minute goes by. Then another. And another.
Something’s wrong, I decide, so I crack the door a little wider and listen for a few seconds. It’s silent inside the apartment.
“Margot?” I holler.
Nothing.
“I’m coming in,” I announce, opening the door a little wider and stepping into the apartment.
The only thing in the living room is a green velvet armchair and a vintage end table with a little gold lamp on it. There are divots in the carpet where the rest of the furniture used to be and a few nails protruding from the blank walls.
I cross the room and head down the only hallway. Margot walks out of a door at the end, stopping me in my tracks. Hereyes are red and glassy. She jerks her hand up to her cheek and quickly wipes away a tear.