“The peanuts!” Portia said. “I have to get them.”

“I’m not eating anything you make. How do I know they aren’t poisoned?”

“Ha! Do you think I’d get you all this way into your apartment only to poison you?”

“Portia, love, go get whatever it is you’re talking about,” Marcus said. “We could use some new nuts around here.”

Portia laughed, dashed out of the men’s apartment and into hers. Grabbing two bags of peanuts, she wheeled back next door, flipping the OPEN sign to CLOSED. When she returned, Marcus was helping Stanley back into his favorite spot by the window with a caring devotion.

Embarrassed to be walking in on such a sweet scene, Portia set the bags down quietly and started to leave.

“We knew your great-aunt,” Stanley said, his eyes still closed, his head back.

“You knew Evie?”

“She bought her town house around the same time Marcus and I bought ours. And let me tell you, this wasn’t considered a good neighborhood back then. We didn’t spend time together, really. She was an actress,” he said, tone at once disdainful and amused. “I was a Broadway producer, and Marcus here was an agent. Actresses always tried to befriend us, and we learned to keep our distance.”

He sat up a bit straighter and opened his eyes. “Evie was different. She didn’t want any favors from anyone. Swore she would make it on her own, and she did. Even after she found success, we didn’t socialize, but we watched out for each other. How could we not, all of us living in these giant town houses? Just me and Marcus, and Evie by herself. Plus, there was the Texas thing. I was born in Texas to a Southern mother who loved to cook. Evie’s sister loved to cook—well, you must know that if you’re her niece.” Stanley gave Portia that wry little smile of his. “I remember you, too,” he continued, “along with the rest of Evie’s wild Texas nieces. Running up and down the fire escape at all hours. I was sure one of you was going to fall to your death.”

Portia smiled back. “It was just me on the fire escape. And I survived.”

“Yes, you did. And now that man and his daughters have moved in. Are you living with him?”

“No!”

Stanley snorted.

Marcus wiggled his eyebrows at her. “I still haven’t managed to catch a glimpse of him. Though Stanley says he’s something to be seen. All rugged and manly.”

“Good God, man, you can’t let the neighbors know that I’m ogling them!” Stanley said.

Marcus laughed, and Stanley began slowly eating his nuts. A few minutes later, Portia found herself in their kitchen, making a cup of hot chamomile tea. She brought it back out to Stanley, who sipped it, and soon his breathing grew easier. A tension in Marcus’s face, which she hadn’t realized was there until it was gone, also eased.

“I’d better go.” Portia wrote down her cell number. “If you need anything, I’m right next door.”

“Evie always said you were like her own children. She loved it when you came to visit.”

“We loved visiting.” Portia squeezed Stanley’s hand, hugged Marcus, and headed home. That was one of the things she had made herself forget when she pushed the knowing away: It always brought about unexpected interactions with strangers. Food had a way of bringing people together.

But every peaceful thought evaporated when she walked into her kitchen and found that someone had taken all the candied figs and nuts. The question circled in her head. Why? And, more important, who?

Twenty-four

ARIEL USED HER KEY to get in the town house. The muted sound of rock music drifted down to her through the walls. She dropped her backpack in the foyer, tilting her chin up to look at the ceiling, trying to understand where the noise was coming from. “Dad?”

But Dad wouldn’t be home. It was barely three. And he sure as heck wouldn’t be listening to any sort of music that thumped and buzzed.

“Miranda?” No answer.

“Portia?” No way Portia would be playing loud music in their house.

She headed up the stairs to the second floor, then on to the third, the music getting louder the higher she went. The whole thing made Ariel feel nervous. But she was pretty sure Miranda was up in the attic doing who knew what.

When she got all the way up, the door was closed, but the music was impossibly loud now, thumping through the wood door. Ariel hesitated, her hand on the knob, then opened the door.

If she thought the music couldn’t get louder, she was wrong. The beat pounded through the room, making her body buzz and her eardrums hurt. No one noticed her, not any of the three guys who lounged around the floor, or the two girls, plus Miranda, who sat Indian style next to them. Ariel only recognized the creep Dustin.

All of them were laughing hysterically. Not that Ariel could hear the sound of their laughter over the music, but she could see how their faces contorted and moved, like watching a silent movie where everyone on-screen was laughing.

It took another second before the smell hit her. A weird sweet smoke smell. And wine. Like her mother used to drink in their house in New Jersey with its big formal living room and dining room, the giant kitchen and den. Ariel still held out hope that her dad would see the light and take them back to Montclair. Weird stuff like Miranda smoking pot and drinking alcohol didn’t happen back in New Jersey.

Ariel stood there frozen, smoke wrapping around her stinging her nose and eyes, as she wondered what to do.

The teenagers still didn’t know she was there. They kept laughing and throwing little chocolate-covered balls, trying to get them into each other’s mouths. As if this were really funny.

The creep noticed her first. He reached over and turned down the sound system. “Hey.” Dustin laughed. “Dude.”

Seriously?

“What’s up?” he added.

Miranda jerked around, her hair flying around her shoulders. When she saw Ariel, her eyes narrowed to mean, thin slits. “Are you spying again?”

“I am not spying!”

“I am not spying!” Miranda mimicked cruelly, making the other kids laugh.

Ariel felt a burn, thinking it was embarrassment, but even that didn’t deter her. “You’re smoking pot. And drinking. Dad could come home any minute.”

“Yep,” one of the girls said, still laughing. “She’s spying. Little sisters are a pain in the ass.”

Miranda glared. “Dad isn’t home. And he’s not coming home anytime soon. So just go and mind your own business, freak.”

The name hurt worse than it should have. Ariel knew people thought she was a freak. Even she had put the description in the title of her journal. But Miranda had never called her that. Since their mom died, Miranda hadn’t been that nice to her, but she hadn’t been outright cruel like she was being now.

Ariel pushed back the tears in her throat, dashing at her eyes that burned and teared, and not for the first time she wished she were a tougher sort of sister, one who would put shaving cream in her sister’s bed, or pour ice-cold water on her feet when she was sleeping. “You’re going to get in trouble, Miranda,” was all she managed, the words sticking in her throat. “Big trouble. You’re smoking pot.”

All of a sudden, the creep leaped at her. Ariel felt her eyes pop open like some sort of cartoon character and she started to back up.

He grabbed her around the shoulders and spun her around. “She isn’t a spy! She’s cool! Right, dude?”

Everything around her rushed by. It was beyond insanity, she knew, but she felt something. Noticed. Which was ridiculous. Appalled at herself, she pushed at his arm. “Put me down, you Neanderthal!”

He did, then offered her a chocolate ball. “For the lady,” he said, sweeping a bow. “In fact, you can have all of mine.” He pushed a little bag filled with chocolate at her.

Ariel scowled at him. But his smile, his bow, his offer of perfect chocolate candy drew her in and she took the bag.

“You have the coolest hair,” the other girl said, as if she were her greatest friend, then turned a pointed look at the girl who had called her a spy.

“Oh, yeah, majorly cool,” that girl added.

They all started talking to her then, each of them offering her chocolate. Miranda rolled her eyes.

Ariel didn’t need Miranda to tell her that the kids didn’t really think anything about her was cool; they just wanted to make sure she didn’t tell on them. But the whole not being invisible thing seduced her even if it wasn’t real.

“Don’t you dare tell Dad,” Miranda said, dragging a deep pull of the joint into her lungs before blowing it out in a rush.

Ariel just stood there, holding tight to the bag of chocolate, smoke wrapping around her as she tried to figure out what she should do. She had just decided that it was her dad’s problem, not hers, when she realized that the burning in her throat and lungs had gotten worse. It happened fast then. Her throat started to close off in a way it hadn’t in years, teasing her into believing that she had outgrown stupid reactions to weird things in the air.

In a flash, she could hardly breathe.

Miranda and the other kids had fired up the sound system again, and the walls throbbed and swelled. Trying her hardest not to panic, Ariel dropped the chocolate and pivoted toward the door. She half ran, half tripped down the stairs to her room, frantically digging around in her backpack as she tried to suck in gasps of breath. Calculator. Antibacterial gel. Socks. Pen after pen. Her head started to throb and swell like the walls upstairs, the music growing fainter even as some part of her realized the music was really getting louder. But just as a massively tired feeling swelled through her body, her fingers clamped around the inhaler, and she jerked it out. The nail-polish picture her mother had painted on it fluttered in front of her eyes. Without thinking, she jammed Einstein into her mouth, squeezing as hard as she could, praying he was smart enough to save her.