Alex
The grocery store is three blocks from the apartment, and I've done this particular errand so many times that my body runs it on autopilot — basket, produce section, the specific brand of yogurt Evie will eat and the two she won't, the coffee that's on sale this week versus the coffee that isn't. I know this store the way I know everything I depend on: completely, practically, without sentimentality.
So I notice immediately when something feels wrong.
It's not a sound. It's not a person I can point to. It's that feeling — the one that lives in the back of my chest and has never once been wrong — the low, persistent hum that sayssomeone is paying attention to youbefore your eyes have found the source. I slow down in the cereal aisle and make a show of reading the back of a box while I use the reflective surface of the freezer door at the end of the row to look behind me.
Nothing. Nobody I can identify. A woman with a stroller, an older man comparing prices, a teenager who is visibly not paying attention to anything except his phone.
I put the cereal in my basket and keep moving.
It's been like this for three days. Since the night at Onyx, since I came home in a stranger's jacket and stood in my bathroom and held my hands under cold water and told myself it was over, that I'd handled it, that the man with the pale blue eyes had let me go, and that was the end of it. I told myself that every morning for three days and every morning for three days my chest did not believe me.
I pay for my groceries, walk home, and check behind me twice and see nothing both times.
Evie is dressed and fed and working on something at the kitchen table when I get back, which means she's been up long enough to get herself ready without being asked, which means she slept well, which is the first thing I check every morning before I check anything else.
"Morning," she says, without looking up.
"Morning." I put the groceries away, pour coffee, lean against the counter, and look at her. She's got colored pencils spread around her in a radius that has claimed most of the table, which means it's an art project, which means it's for pleasure rather than school. Evie draws when she's in a good mood. It's one of my favorite things to know about her. "What is it?"
She turns the paper around. A building, detailed and careful, with windows she's filled in with different colors. "Our building," she says. "I'm giving everyone different curtains."
"What color did you give us?"
"Green. Like your eyes." She turns it back and adds a line. "Mr. Roberts got orange because he has an orange blanket."
"What about Marta?"
"Purple. She seems like a purple person." She adds another window. "Did you get the yogurt?"
"The right kind."
"Good. The other one tastes like sadness."
I drink my coffee and watch her draw and let the morning be quiet for a few minutes, which is a thing I've learned to do — to take the quiet when it's available instead of filling it with the next thing on the list. Then I put my mug in the sink and pick up my bag.
"I'll be at the café until four," I tell her. "Mr. Roberts knows you're home. I'll check in at lunch." I pause. "Evie."
She looks up.
"The door stays locked today. All day." I keep my voice even, not alarmed, not the voice that makes her worry. Just the instruction voice, the one she knows, is non-negotiable. "Don't open it for anyone except Mr. Roberts or Marta. Not for anyone who says they know me. Not for anyone who says they're a friend. Not for anyone."
She looks at me for a moment with those serious eyes. "Is something wrong?"
"No," I say. "I'm just reminding you."
"You only say it like that when something is wrong."
She's not incorrect, which is inconvenient. "I say it like that because it's important," I say. "There's a difference."
She accepts this with the expression that says we willbe revisiting this later."Okay," she says. "Door locked. Got it."
I kiss the top of her head. She goes back to her drawing. I let myself out and stand in the hallway and listen to both locks slide home and the doorknob rattle as she tests it from the inside, and some of the tightness in my chest eases.
Some of it, anyway.
The café is six blocks from the apartment, and my shift starts at eight, which means I have four minutes when I arrive, which isenough time to tie my apron, check the section chart, and call Evie before the first tables need coffee.
