Will cleared his throat, straightened in his chair. Right. Two weeks, basically. He could do that. And he was charming! Witness his coffee jokes, or the way he always got called in for crying kids. Or crying adults, frankly. He could do this. Get some goodwill, get the apartment into shape, get money, get Donny out of his head. The woman on the balcony had nothing to do with it.

He just had to stay focused.

Sally snapped the tablet shut, smiled across the table at him as though they’d shaken hands on a deal. “If I were you,” she said cheerfully, “I’d start with Eleanora.”

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

“He called you Ms. Clarke!”

Nora pursed her lips and prayed for strength as murmurs of disapproval spread through the assembled group. This building meeting was really, really not going well.

That made two in a row, not that Nora was counting, and since the last one had been what basically amounted to a collectively devastated debrief over Donny’s death, that was really saying something. But this morning—called together hastily once again—Nora’s neighbors seemed almost as shocked, almost as shaken as they were during that last meeting. Their regular business—maintenance reports, budget updates, event calendars—all of it shunted to some other day.

All because of the man on the balcony, and his awful letter.

His letter!

“Marian,” Nora said, trying to keep the exclamations that were in her head out of her voice. “Why don’t you let me have that back for now?”

“Ms.!” Marian repeated, drawing it out, fully exclamated— Mizzzzzzz!—obviously not ready to let Nora have the letter back. She was staring down at it through the lenses of her glasses like she could make it catch fire with her eyes. “I give him points for making no assumptions about you, Nora, but this whole thing doesn’t seem very neighborly!”

“Right,” Nora said, reaching a hand out from her spot by the washing machines. “If I could—”

“Strangers,” Emily said quietly, shaking her head. “Staying here.”

“Don’t see as how it’ll work,” said Jonah, his arms crossed over his skinny chest. “People coming in and out like that. What is it, like a hotel?”

“Yep,” said Benny, also arms crossed. He and Jonah always sat together, the younger, quieter Benny having long ago developed an abiding admiration for eighty-year-old Jonah’s extremely loud pronouncements.

“A hotel!” Emily gasped, and Marian reached over, gently patting her wife’s hand. At present, however, her attention was divided between comfort and outrage, because she was still looking down at the letter.

“He’s already filed for the registration!” she cried, affronted, and Nora definitely knew the feeling.

The man from the other morning wasn’t loyal, after all.