Nonna had always been saying that.

Nora closed her eyes, thinking of what Nonna might say now. She probably would say that Donny wasn’t people. She would say that she trusted Donny—that Donny, like everyone else in the building who had been her neighbor, her family (no almost about it!), for years and years, would’ve made sure the apartment would be left in good hands, left to someone who understood what it was all about here. In fact, that’s what everyone else in the building seemed to think, too. Nonna, after all, had left her apartment to Nora, because she’d known that Nora would take extra care. She’d known that Nora loved the building as much as she did.

“Maybe he’ll have left it to one of us,” Jonah had said only the week before, during their first building meeting since Donny’s passing. Nora had stood at the front of the room, the concrete floor of the basement laundry room a hard press of reality against the soles of her sneakers. She watched the faces of her neighbors light in hope, and she’d thought of the three unreturned phone calls she’d made to Donny’s attorney.

I think we would’ve already heard, she’d thought. I think we would’ve heard if it was one of us.

But she hadn’t said that. She’d pasted on a smile and said, “I guess we’ll have to wait and see,” clutching the building bylaws in her hand with a sense of impending doom. If it wasn’t one of them, she didn’t know who it could be, because in addition to being quiet and kind, Donny was also, for as long as she’d known him, alone. No girlfriend, no boyfriend, no friends or family outside these walls.

Was 4:00 a.m. too early to try calling that attorney again?