Page 9 of Rising Heat

CHAPTER TWO

darcy

The South End looks exactly like the version of Boston I’ve been building in my head for weeks.

Tree-lined streets stripped bare by winter. Wrought iron railings. Rows of old brownstones standing shoulder to shoulder like they’ve seen everything and survived it anyway. This block feels tucked away, the kind of street people fight to pretend they discovered first.

Something about that feels more reassuring than it has any right to.

Tires hiss on damp pavement somewhere nearby. A siren cuts faint and distant through the air before disappearing. Around the corner, someone’s dog barks before being shushed.

I walk until I’m standing in front of the address from the listing—and stop in my tracks.

The photos did not do it justice.

The building rises three stories in warm red brick, all old-Boston bones and clean renovation lines, the brass numbers above the door still gleaming damp from last night’s rain. Tall windows catch the light in soft, uneven squares.

And there are actual flower boxes with little patches of evergreen still hanging on in February.

I stare at them longer than I mean to.

Whoever lives here believes in effort. That feels, absurdly, like information I needed.

My boots tap softly against the damp stoop as I take in the call box mounted beside the heavy front door, modest and black against the brick—modern enough to work without fuss, understated enough not to ruin the aesthetic. Three buzzers sit beneath it. The bottom reads MacAllister. The second is covered with a strip of faded painter’s tape. The top is blank.

I pull up the email on my phone:

MacAllister Properties. Tour scheduled

10:00 a.m.

Please ring top buzzer upon arrival.

I glance between the email and the call box before pressing the top button, because I am a grown woman who drove three hundred miles and can survive ringing a doorbell.

For a second, nothing.

Then the speaker crackles.

“Hey.”

The voice is warm and easy, and something about the casualness of it catches me off guard.

“Hi. Um—Darcy. I’m here for the apartment tour?”

A beat passes before an unmistakably amused voice comes back through the speaker.

“Right on time. That’s already a point in your favor.”

The lock buzzes before I can decide what that means. The front door clicks open, and a second later I’m stepping into warmth.

The foyer smells like cedar and fresh coffee and someone’s clean laundry and, underneath all of that, something faintly smoky. My brain immediately files this under good house smells before following up with this is not relevant information, Darcy, and yet somehow continuing to mentally note it anyway.

The dark wood floors gleam beneath my feet, rich and freshly refinished but still bearing the tiny nicks and scuffs that remind me this building existed before anyone decided to make it pretty.

Exposed brick climbs beside the staircase, meeting black iron railing and Edison sconces that cast warm light across the old plaster walls.

My fingers tighten around the strap of my bag. For one dizzy second I can see it—my keys in a bowl by the door, shoes by the mat, music drifting from the apartment while I cook.