“Hello, I’m Sarah Lyons. I live down the hall.” She spoke in a low, mellifluous voice and gestured lazily with a manicured hand at the hallway opposite the stairwell. “I noticed that the police tape was coming off the door and I wanted to make sure…” Her voice trailed off. Make sure you’re not a thief breaking into this apartment, she meant.

“I’m Claudia’s sister,” I said.

“Lily?” she answered, as if we’d met before. “Oh, hello. You live in Madrid, don’t you?”

Her cheerful tone grated on me, but I knew that I was an irrational mess of tattered hopes and dashed prayers. “Barcelona. I just moved there from Madrid.” My voice strained with the effort of manners.

“You’re a journalist, aren’t you? Claudia told me something about that being why you moved there.”

“I went to Spain a year ago because I was writing a travel guide about it. I ended up deciding to stay for a while.” My answer was mechanical. I wasn’t going to admit to a complete stranger that I’d been desperate to escape the emotional undertow of my relationship with my sister, among other things. I’d almost convinced myself that I hadn’t abandoned Claudia. After all, I’d given her my apartment, and every month I’d mailed the rent check directly to the superintendent. But now she was gone and I was left with the guilty knowledge that I hadn’t really taken care of her at all.

“Spain is such a wonderful country,” Sarah said, her smile revealing perfect, pearly teeth before her expression darkened. “I’m so sorry about your sister. I was very fond of Claudia. She was such an unusual person. Unique.” Sarah’s heart-shaped face was sorrowful, but there was nothing affectionate in her tone. I wondered if she was being sarcastic. Calling Claudia unusual was like referring to the pope as religious. Sometimes I’d felt guilty about inflicting her on my neighbors, but she had to live somewhere. She’d already put in time in a south Bronx squat and in various shelters around Manhattan.

“Thank you.”

“It’s such a sad situation,” Sarah continued. “Claudia was so young. What was she, twenty-eight?”

“She turned twenty-seven in November.”

“I should have remembered—she told me that—but she looked older. I suppose she’d just had such a hard life.”

Behind my eyes, there was a sign that was flashing Get lost. Sarah didn’t see it, or she didn’t care, because she went on. “Claudia told me a little of your family history—”