I’ll ask tomorrow night. We’re having dinner. His name is Lorik, and I’m so thankful that I met him.

Chapter 34

Ibought a new blouse and a short, though modest skirt today. A seamstress two streets away in a hole-in-the-wall shop, who measures and trims and sews while her customers wait. When I see myself in the mirror of my rented room, I can’t help but smile. I look pretty. And I know Lorik, who’s only ever seen me in jeans and a T-shirt, will think I look nice, too. Going to a restaurant together for the first time is completely different from flipping through each other’s books in a café.

But I still have to wear the same sneakers. The only ones I brought with me. Next time I’ll upgrade those, too.

I look at the clock, it’s soon time. I comb my hair, even put on a pair of earrings I found in a colorful shop near where the square ends, which sells just about anything. Really anything at all. Real gold, it said on the tag, but that’s surely the one thing they’re not—real metal, perhaps—but it doesn’t matter, they glitter and make me feel grown up. And when I’m about . . .

Shhhhh.

I freeze mid-movement.

Stand still. Listen. And there—there they are again.

Steps.

Just outside my door.

I don’t know why I react so strongly. I have nothing to be afraid of. No one’s threatened me, other than some of the women at one of the bars, the ones who get paid and think I’m confusing their prospective customers, and once a bartender who thought I should go home because otherwise things might turn out bad for me, since not all men are good. But that’s not why my heart starts racing anxiously, like it wants to help me escape. I just haven’t heard anyone else in this building. The owner lives on the ground floor and is gone for a month and the man who takes care of the yard sticks to fetching rakes and hedge trimmers from the garden shed.

The footsteps have stopped.

Now there’s a knock. Determined thuds against my door.

I freeze, and there are knocks again.

More of them.

“Hello?”

A woman’s voice. In English. With an Albanian accent. I don’t respond.

“Hello—in there?”

A voice that I could never, no matter how scared or hunted I might feel, find threatening or aggressive or dangerous. Kind. Pleasant.

“Miss, I would really . . .”

I open the door. We stare at each other. A woman in her forties, maybe forty-five. Eyes as friendly as her voice. Cheeks with deep grooves that I would guess come from more than just age. Tired. That’s how I would describe her. Or sad? It’s hard to say when you don’t know someone, have never even seen them before.