“Oh, don’t worry about us, honey. We’ll be fine.”

CHAPTER 26

Iris’s dad had spent the last twenty-five years of his life working more than fifty hours a week as a floor manager for the automotive supply company that had just laid him off. He was a good worker. He showed up early and stayed late. He’d missed every one of her soccer games working overtime shifts. And for what? He had lectured her for hours on the virtues of engineering and how it would lead to a secure and steady career. Now he was unemployed, and Iris couldn’t find her goddamned lighter. She eventually just lit a smoke off the stove.

They’d chewed him up and spit him out, just like Ellie said. Five cigarettes later, she was tired of pacing. The apartment was a hotbox. She hated it. She’d lived there for three straight years with the curry smell, stray cockroaches, and Mrs. Capretta’s insanity. Iris stomped down the driveway with the apartment listings under her arm. Mrs. Capretta’s sink was running as Iris ducked under her window.

The streets of Tremont were lined with run-down houses next to recent renovations. She did her best to sort through them, making a point of not wandering too close to Nick’s condo while she tracked down apartment listings. Every thirty minutes or so she rang a buzzer and got a tour.

By 4:00 p.m. she had seen all of the ant traps and caked-on counter crud she could stomach in one day. There was one more place on her list, and that would be it. She turned down a one-way street and pulled up to a small house. It was newly renovated. The appliances were cheap but had never been used. Wall-to-wall Berber carpet had just been installed, and there wasn’t an ant trap in sight. Done. She signed the papers that afternoon.

A celebration was in order. She walked a half block from her new front door and into the Lava Lounge at the corner. Glossy portraits of martinis hung on the purple walls. Green olives danced in the glasses, swinging from toothpick poles like little round strippers. Iris plopped herself down at the empty bar and ordered her first vodka martini. Here’s to new beginnings, she thought, holding up the delicate glass. The drink scorched her throat on the way down, and she resisted a shudder.

“Drink okay?” The bartender was easily in his forties and gave Iris the creepy once-over.

She pulled the newspaper out of her bag to send the guy packing to the other end of the bar. The classifieds were covered with her scribbling from the day of house hunting. She flipped back to the front page and reread the headline: “Dennis! And the Default of 1978.” She sipped the vodka and read the story again. The city defaulted on December 15, 1978. She stared at the date. It was just two weeks before the First Bank of Cleveland closed.

Before she knew it, her vodka was gone and her head felt too loose on her neck. She had to get out of there or she wouldn’t be able to drive home. Stepping back out into the oppressive heat reminded her that her new apartment had central air-conditioning. Iris had never lived in the complete luxury of climate control. She was moving up in the world. The liquor buzz was still building as she sauntered over to her car. The urge to celebrate her good news with somebody besides her mother became overwhelming, and she couldn’t help but think of Nick. She had just leased an apartment three blocks away from his townhouse. They were practically neighbors. Even if they did just have casual sex in an abandoned building, they were still friends. Right?

That settled it. The key found the ignition on the second try, and her car navigated itself through the narrow streets until she’d found the front door she’d seen in a framed photo on Nick’s desk. At least she was pretty sure it was the right one. She waltzed up the front steps ready to shout, “Hi, neighbor!” and throw her arms around him. That was the vodka-fueled plan.

She was just about to knock when she heard peals of laughter coming from inside. It was a woman’s voice. Not just any woman; it was Miss Staff Liaison Amanda’s voice.

“So, show me how this spackling stuff works. I’ve only read about these things, you know.”

Iris could hear Nick saying something back, but she couldn’t quite hear what.

“That son of a bitch!” she hissed under her breath as she stumbled back down the stairs to her car. Nick, the office Casanova with all of his easy smiles and arms around her shoulder, had moved on to the next girl. She smacked herself hard in the forehead. He didn’t care about her. She ripped the door open to her car. He just plucked some low-hanging fruit. He plucked the hell out of it. She slammed the door shut.

Iris careened her way across town and back into her second-floor sauna. What had she expected? She slammed through the front door. He was a twenty-eight-year-old man who had no use for a dumb girl like her—at least not anymore.

Iris lit a cigarette and flopped on the couch. The answering machine was blinking. It wasn’t Nick. She no longer harbored any hope it was Nick. It blinked at her for a solid minute before she stomped over and hit the button.

“Hello? This is Suzanne Peplinski. You asked me to call if I could remember anything else. Well”—the hushed voice on the recording dropped down to almost a whisper—“maybe you should come by and see me.”

Iris played the message again. She pulled the key to Box 547 out of her change purse and looked at it. Someone had left it in the secretary’s desk. Some girl named Beatrice had called Suzanne in the middle of the night to ask about a safe deposit box twenty years ago.

“Who fucking cares? Enough already!” Iris muttered, and grabbed a beer from the fridge. That little old lady or whoever it was who lost Key 547 should have gone looking for it herself.

Iris took a long shower and climbed into bed half-drunk. Echoes of Nick’s and Amanda’s laughter made her put a pillow over her head. They were perfect for each other, with their perfect bodies, perfect clothes, and perfect lives.

All Iris had was her shitty job surveying a creepy building by herself. She wasn’t even that good at it, missing bays on the plans and getting sidetracked. Mr. Wheeler had only picked her for the field assignment because she was just dumb enough to do what she was told and not ask questions.

The thought made her sit up in bed. The old building was filled to the rafters with questions that begged to be asked. Beatrice Baker’s personnel file was full of weird notes. The bank shut down fourteen days after the city of Cleveland went bankrupt. People didn’t even get a chance to clean out their desks. Keys were lost. Safe deposit boxes were abandoned, and the building had been kept under lock and key for twenty years. Maybe there was a reason Mr. Wheeler had chosen the youngest staff member to survey the building by herself. He didn’t want anyone asking questions.

She shook her head, and the room sloshed back and forth from all the beer and vodka she’d drunk. It was a ridiculous notion. Mr. Wheeler was just trying to save a buck by sending her into the building alone. Still, the flashlight up on the fifteenth floor wandered back into her spinning head. Someone had been up there looking for something.

The clock read 11:30 p.m. It was too late to call Suzanne back.

CHAPTER 27

Sunday morning Iris woke up on the couch with a vodka headache.

“Ouch!” she groaned. Her hands wrapped around her skull in a futile effort to keep the invisible hammer from pounding it to bits. She lay there until the second wave of nausea passed.