After about fifteen minutes I could hear them talking, and I crept further along the wall to listen. I saw them as they passed by. Rita was apologizing for me, spilling her guts about me, about my “project,” how I was “working through things” by being here. Like she had any idea! Krystal was bobbing her head, eating up every morsel of information about batshit Bonnie. As usual, she disgusted me. Nothing had changed there.

But Rita! The betrayal was breathtaking. Making sandwiches. Laughing.

When I heard their voices moving away, exiting the city, I stole back upstairs, to Apartment 201. I alone had that key.

Unlocking the upstairs apartment door, I felt total relief as I slipped inside and shut it against the terrible world. For the moment, I felt safe.

Two days went by. Three. I was under siege. In the kitchen I found four stray cans of food I had left in the cupboards three years ago upon moving downstairs, and I began rationing them.

I felt feverish, wired. Sleep didn’t help or didn’t come. At least the door to Apartment 201 had a security chain lock, unlike the Ropers’ apartment, but it was laughably flimsy, so for extra protection I shoved furniture against the door. Each day I piled more furniture there until, on the fifth day, the door was completely obscured.

At different times throughout each day Rita would knock, begging me to open the door. At first she was beseeching. “She just wants to talk to you. Please come out,” she said on the second day. “Please?”

“You don’t know who she is,” I said through the door. “I saw you making sandwiches.” I paused. She didn’t reply. I got angry. “This is my thing, Rita! I told you I didn’t want anyone else here. Why aren’t you listening?”

She may have sighed. “Come on, she just wants to talk. She seems nice. And she’s worried about you. She wants to know if you’re coming home. She needs you.”

When I didn’t reply further, Rita lightly knocked again. “She says you’re a relative? Her sister?”

After that I stopped responding to her appeals.

On the seventh day she tried to get wily, told me, “She’s gone, Bonnie.” Called me by my old name!

And she was lying. I had heard Krystal’s laugh earlier from somewhere in the distance, I knew I had. Maybe Rita had her downstairs in our apartment—what had once been our apartment, anyway—drinking tea and eating cookies. God only knew.

Now, there is an argument to be made here for Rita. Being Mrs. Roper had warped her somehow. It was the only explanation I could think of as to why she had abandoned all semblance of her formerly paranoid, prepper self and was now serving crumpets to my enemies and trying to wheedle me into peace talks. Helen Roper was, after all, a courteous host, a loving soul. She believed there was good in everyone, even me, crusty old Stanley.

Even Krystal.