Chapter 7: Three Nights

By Saturday, Rachel had a routine, and the routine had a smell.

Bridge at eleven, bag under her head, not in her lap, because Dottie said so. Up at 4:40 when the first freight train rolled over and rattled every bolt in the trestle. Sal’s sink by five, bubblegum soap, the hand dryer, the hubcap. Two trains, twelve blocks, Hector under the green awning saying “Morning, Miss Moore,” the mahogany elevator, and then forty-two floors of pretending.

Sal never said anything about it. But Saturday morning when she came out of the restroom with her hair still steaming, there was a small coffee sitting on the ledge outside the bulletproof window. Light, two sugars. She’d never told him how she took it.

“What’s this?”

Sal didn’t look up from the crossword. “Seven letters. ‘Shows up regular.’ Starts with P.”

She thought about it. “Punctual.”

“There you go.” He wrote it in. “Coffee’s from the machine. It’s terrible. Drink it anyway.”

It was terrible. She drank every drop.

* * *

It was the blouse that got her.

Saturday was a half day at the penthouse, and she was polishing the brass fixtures in the powder room when Julian Cross walked past, stopped, and backed up two steps into the doorway.

“That’s the same blouse,” he said.

Rachel kept polishing. “It’s a very good blouse.”

“Thursday, Friday, and now today. Third day running.”

“I’m trying a uniform thing. Like Steve Jobs.”

“Steve Jobs owned more than one turtleneck, Ms. Moore.”

She looked up. He was holding a coffee, standing there in a gray T-shirt on a Saturday like a regular person, and his face was doing the thing it did, perfectly polite and taking notes.

“Maybe I’m sentimental about it,” she said.

He looked at her a long moment. Then he said, “Hm,” which was not a word, and walked away. And she stood there with a rag in her hand and her face hot like she’d been caught stealing silverware.

* * *

Sunday she had off. Sunday was the worst.

No penthouse to hide in. No reason to be anywhere. She rode the 4 train from Woodlawn all the way down to Crown Heights and back up again, three times, because it was warm and nobody bothered you if your eyes were open. Between rides she charged her phone behind the large-print section at the Bronx Library Center.

She bought a composition notebook at a dollar store on Fordham. Ninety-nine cents, black and white marble cover, like seventh grade. And she started writing it all down, because that’s who she was. Columns, dates, times. Thurs 10/15, 2:14 p.m.: $8,612.40 out of joint checking. Locks changed. Car gone. Fri 10/16, 6:45ish p.m.: Chloe S. struck me in the face, foyer, 14 Linden Ct. Witness: Noah (4). She crossed that out. She wasn’t putting a baby in her ledger.

M. nervous. Checked phone x2, nothing came in. Looked at office window x2. “Papers at the kitchen table last spring.”

What papers? She sat in the library and tried to remember last spring, and all she could see was the kitchen island, a bottle of Veuve Clicquot, Michael being sweet. A lot of sticky flags.

Then, because she was weak and it was Sunday, she went on I*******m.

Chloe Sutton’s account was public. Of course it was. @chloesuttonlives, eleven thousand followers, a bio that said mama | dreamer | blessed. Rachel scrolled.

The newest post was from Friday night. A photo of a kitchen. White subway tile. Butcher-block island. A yellow KitchenAid stand mixer in the corner, the one Rachel got with Kohl’s Cash and three coupons. Her herb pots on the windowsill, the basil already drooping because nobody’d watered it since Thursday.

New beginnings, 5 years in the making 🤍🏡

Three hundred and six likes. A comment from somebody named @jenn.vanderhoff: FINALLY!!! So happy for you babe, you deserve this.

Rachel turned the phone face down on the library table. She sat with her hands flat on either side of it for a long time.

Then she turned it back over and screenshotted the whole post, with the date and the comments, and wrote it in her notebook.

* * *

She got back to the bridge a little after ten that night, and she knew before she got there.

Dottie’s tarp was down, torn off the cart and lying in a puddle like a dead thing. The cart was on its side, wheels in the air, and Dottie’s stuff was everywhere. Her milk crate, cracked.

There was blood on the concrete. Not a lot, but enough. Dark and smeared, like somebody had tried to get up from it and slipped.

“Dottie?”

Nothing. A train went over and dropped grit on the blood.

“They took her.” An old man in a sleeping bag a few yards down, one sneaker on, the other foot wrapped in a plastic bag. Rachel had never heard him talk. “EMS. ’Bout six. Lincoln, they said.”

Lincoln Hospital was eleven blocks. Rachel ran most of them.

The ER smelled like Purell and wet coats and somebody’s chicken over rice. It took forty minutes and one lie about being Dottie’s niece to get back there. They had her on a gurney in the hallway, under fluorescent lights, a paper bracelet on her wrist.

Her left eye was purple and swollen shut. There were three black stitches through her eyebrow. When she shifted, she winced and held her side.

“Oh my God. Dottie.”

“Took you long enough.” The good eye opened. Still sharp. “Two ribs. Cracked, not broke. Doctor looks about twelve. I told him so.”

Rachel grabbed her hand. Dottie let her, which was how Rachel knew how bad it was.

“Who did this?”

“Guy came by around four. Nice shoes, which is how you know.” Dottie shifted again and hissed. “Gray suit. Big mustache, like a cop on a TV show from 1985. Asking about a pretty one with green eyes. Long brown hair. Showed me his phone.”

Rachel’s skin went cold from the scalp down.

“A picture,” Dottie said. “Of you. Under there. Asleep, with the bag under your head like I told you. Taken real close.” She looked at Rachel steady with her one good eye. “Somebody paid him to go take a picture of you sleeping, honey. That’s not a mugger. Muggers don’t do pictures.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him to go to hell, and I gave him directions.” Dottie’s mouth twisted. “He didn’t like that.”

Rachel sat down hard on the edge of the gurney.

Who even knew? She hadn’t told anybody. Not Tessa, not Delia, not one human being. She’d taken a different car on the 4 every morning. She’d been so careful.

In her coat pocket, her phone buzzed against her hip.

She pulled it out. A gray banner across the top of the screen, the kind she’d swiped away a hundred times without reading.

Reminder: Michael Hayes can see your location. Location sharing is ON.

She looked at the little toggle under it. Green. Bright, cheerful, Apple green.

It had been on all week.