As we entered the bedroom, I noted how bright it was—even brighter than the front room. Row houses traditionally have all the windows on the fronts and backs of the buildings; the sides remain windowless because they share walls with neighboring row houses. But Audrey’s bedroom had two windows: one small, slit-like window at what was the back of the building, and one larger one to the side.

I peered through her side window and frowned. “This bedroom looks out onto an alley.”

Audrey shrugged. “Yeah, I saw it on the way in. But it’s a skinny little alley. It’s not like there are going to be cars driving up and down it all night or anything.”

“It’s not cars I’m worried about,” I murmured, pressing my face against the window to better view the alley. “At least it looks like there’s a gate on either end. But you should definitely get a curtain ASA—”

Bang!

Audrey and I both jumped at the sound of her front door whipping open. We exchanged a look and returned to the living room, where we found her skeevy upstairs neighbor standing in the doorway, his fingertips drumming an irregular beat on the can he still clutched.

“You ever hear of knocking?” Audrey demanded, hands on hips.

He looked at her without blinking. “Grandma wanted me to tell you that the dumpster and recycling are behind the building.”

“Thanks. Knock next time.”

He lifted a bony shoulder in a noncommittal response.

“By the way,” Audrey said, “can you tell your grandmother she only gave me one key for the front door?”

“There’s only one key.”

“But there are three locks,” she said, pointing.

He barely concealed the amusement on his face as he repeated, “There’s only one key.”

CHAPTER FIVE AUDREY

I’d never lived alone. I moved from my parents’ suburban home to a shared dorm room at OSU to a crowded sorority house to New York City, where I couldn’t have afforded to live alone even if I had wanted to. I met my first New York roommates—a pair of eating-disordered PR assistants looking for a third for their soulless, cramped Upper East Side convertible—on Craigslist, and I cheerfully abandoned them and their empty refrigerator when Izzy announced she was moving to the city. The fact that we hung sheets to partition that first apartment—a tiny one-bedroom in Chinatown—didn’t faze me at all; there was something comforting in hearing someone else sleep. I would die before I admitted it, but I was a little sad when we upgraded to our two-bedroom in the East Village.

As the movers stacked my boxes in my living room, I worried I had made a mistake and should have taken Cat up on her offer. I wasn’t cut out for living by myself. The silence alone would kill me. I thought of my Granny Wanda, who took to leaving the television on all day after my grandfather died. My mother chastised her for it, argued she was wasting electricity, but I understood. Granny Wanda had needed those soaps and game shows to keep her company; she needed their voices so she didn’t go completely mad.