I’m reaching for the remote again when my senses pick up movement from the doorway. There’s a soft outline of a body in the shadows.

A cold blast of fear nails me square in the chest as my fight-or-flight response kicks in. Just before I hurl the remote at the doorway and spring off the recliner for the knife that I used to cut an apple earlier, the person takes a step forward.

“Val!” I pant, throwing myself back into the chair. My heart pounds so hard that it takes me a second to get it under control. “What the fuck?”

“You gave me the key.” She bounds over to the sofa and throws herself on it. “I couldn’t sleep and saw that you were on social media a few minutes ago, so I came over to cuddle.”

My hand splays over my chest. “And you didn’t think to shoot me a text?”

She shrugs as she pulls a throw blanket off the back of the couch and over her body. Then she nestles down into the pillows.

“What’s keeping you up? You’re never up this late,” she says.

“Life.” I toss the remote to her. “I can’t find anything to watch.”

The remote lies untouched at her stomach.

“What’s keeping you up?” I ask her.

“Generalized insomnia.”

“How generalized?”

She presses her lips together. “Basically, it’s generalized into three main categories. One is guilt about things I said to my mother when I was a teenager.”

I laugh at that because Val and her mother have an amazing relationship. I guarantee her mom isn’t thinking about any of those things tonight.

“The second category is actually a question. Where are my birth certificate and Social Security cards right now?”

“Seriously, Val?”

She raises her head a couple of inches off the pillow. “Yes, seriously. What if I need them? Do you know how sucky and hard it would be to try to get those things replaced? I don’t even have the documentation to get them replaced because I don’t have either one of them. It would be mission impossible!” Her head drops like a rock back to the pillows. “I should know where these are, and I don’t. I don’t have a clue. Hell, have I ever even had possession of them? I don’t know.”

I giggle. “Why are you this way?”

“Beats me.” She sighs dramatically. “And the third thing is that I need to find affordable housing that’s not over a funeral home.”

I make a face.

“Yeah,” she says. “That probably should’ve been reason number one.”

“You think?”

“I didn’t think it would bother me,” she says. “Like, the people that come in there are already dead. They’re not going to haunt the place that put them to rest. They’re going to go torment their husband that’s now fucking their best friend or the woman that killed them. Right?”

I lift my shoulders up and down. “I don’t know. I don’t want to think about it, to be completely honest with you. And may I just say that I pointed all of this out before you signed that lease last year?”