Instead, I’d raced up the stairs of the Lower East Side tenement and found her door crisscrossed with yellow crime-scene tape. My hands shook as I peeled it off the right side of the doorframe, leaving tendrils dangling like wilted vines. This was further than Claudia had ever gone for a joke. My old keys still turned the two locks. Then I took a deep breath, pushed the door open and stepped inside.

The smell wasn’t anything like death. Instead, something sweetly floral made my nose twitch. The apartment had always been shortchanged on natural light, but there was enough to make out ghostly silhouettes of furniture. I brushed my hand against the wall and the overhead light flickered on. The living room was painted a robin’s egg blue, just as I’d left it when I’d hastily moved out a year ago. One wall was lined with my rickety old bookcases; across from them was the small sofa I’d found on the street and reupholstered, back in the days before bedbugs had made New Yorkers leery of sidewalk finds. There was a walnut night table I’d found at a thrift shop, with a new television and DVD player on it. At the far end of the room, under the window, was an Art Deco desk I’d regretted leaving behind. There was an empty space in the center, with a bright pink rectangle in it. It wasn’t until I was right in front of it that I realized it was an iPod. I wondered where my sister had come up with the money, and how she’d held back from pawning the gadgets when she was nauseated with the craving for a fix.

“Claudia?” I called out, my voice cracking on the last syllable. My voice was too loud in this empty room.