I woke up to about five text messages, all from Enzo. I’d learned that he woke up about an hour and a half earlier than the time I was normally up, and by then, he would have seen a handful of funny viral videos that he thought would be hilarious to send my way. The first two times he did that, I was a little taken aback. I kept thinking there was an emergency I had slept through or something. But on the fourth time, I had almost busted a rib laughing at them, and I realized it was actually a great way to wake up.

We didn’t spend the rest of the day constantly texting, but we’d send random messages whenever something came up. It was fun, and honestly, also a little weird. It made me think “hm” on a few different occasions. What exactly did this mean? Enzo was a great guy, and he was seemingly turning into a great friend, but why couldn’t I shake the feeling of something more looming over every text message I sent? I was even deleting and rewriting a few so that I could get it exactly right. I never second-guessed my text messages with anyone else. And yet with Enzo, I needed a folder to hold all the drafted and trashed text messages.

I rolled out of bed and got through my morning routine, getting a few laughs from this morning’s batch of texts. One of the videos was a compilation of people sliding on ice, which had me cracking up since I’ve been one of those people who flail around helplessly while the ice sweeps you away. Another video was of a flight attendant giving the safety presentation while impersonating at least fifteen celebrities, and doing a great job at it, too. I texted back a trio of smiley faces and pointed out that the ice one was my favorite.

I never text smileys. What the hell is wrong with me?

I tossed the phone onto my bed, deciding I wasn’t about to become a slave to it. My closet doors were already open, so I reached in and grabbed my outfit for today. A long-sleeved button-up shirt with a plaid pattern, pink and white. My tailored navy blue pants and a light brown belt would put it all together. I wanted to look good today. A little better than I felt I normally did. I always wanted to step things up on the days I had interviews.

Well, depending on who the interview was with. If I had to be talking to a drug dealer so I could get information, I’d probably dress down a bit. Maybe throw on sneakers instead of wingtips. But today I was visiting with Susan, the deceased woman’s sister, and so I wanted to look professional as well as approachable. I knew she would still be hurting from her loss, so I didn’t want to come across as intimidating, either. These were all things I had to think about. Things other detectives tended to overlook led to mistakes. A lot of people don’t realize that the investigation starts before you step foot out of your own door. Everything needed to be in place so I could extract the most valuable information for the case, and that meant thinking hard about everything from how I was going to dress to how I was going to introduce myself.

“Hello, Ms. Rowland. I’m Detective Holden, here about your sister, Luanne.”

I was standing outside of Susan’s apartment, inside of a dingy hallway. She lived down in Brooklyn, in a small efficiency that was near the iconic bridge and also right across the street from a police station. There were currently three people yelling about being handcuffed as they were getting dragged into the station, the sounds of their drunk protest coming in through an open window at the end of the hall. A police car turned down the street with its siren blaring, causing Susan to wince.

“Come inside, come,” she said, stepping aside. I walked in, immediately hit with the smell of greasy cooking. The smell was almost overpowering. Maybe because it was such a small space, or maybe because the place didn’t feel too clean to begin with. It was stuffy. The blinds were drawn even though it was the middle of the day, and the tan carpet appeared to have never met a vacuum. There was a space heater that was doing what it could, but the cold still nipped at me as I took my coat off.

I wondered if she had lived like this since before her sister passed, or if it was only brought on because of her death.

“Do you want water or anything?” Susan offered. She was a frail woman, despite being the younger of the two, but she carried herself with age. Rather, it looked like she carried too much of it. Her shoulders were slumped as though she’d live through decades worth of stress, and the bags under her eyes did nothing to help rejuvenate her.

“I’m okay, thank you,” I said, glancing around the small room. There was an old couch pushed up against the wall which looked like it converted into a bed, although judging by the imprint of Susan’s body on the cushions, she never pulled the bed out, choosing to sleep curled up on the couch instead. It told me she lived alone. She never needed the extra room to share with someone.

The kitchen, which was hard to call a kitchen since it was basically just a wall with a cheap oven and a tiny refrigerator, was kept clean from what I could see. The one block of counter held a stack of clean paper plates. The small refrigerator hummed next to it, as if it were begging for someone to put it out of its misery.

“So, you’re here investigating my sister’s death?”

I looked to her. She had her hands bundled together against her chest. She was wearing a thick white sweater that gave her the illusion of having some kind of bulk, but her jeans cut off near the ankles, and those were stick thin.

“I am. There was something that happened that night, and the police aren’t sure they have all the details right.”

“You’re not police?”

“No, I’m a private detective.” I avoided saying anything about Ricardo. I didn’t want to taint the information Susan had, because if she also agreed that Ricardo did it, then she would immediately shut down if I said I were representing him. Instead, I stuck with the truth, that I was here to figure out what happened to Luanne.

For a second, I thought Susan was going to dig further, but she moved to the couch and sat down at the edge, her hands between her knees, her face looking up at me. She knew I was here to help, and I was determined to do exactly that.

“I just can’t believe she’s gone,” she started, a cry getting stuck in her throat. I moved to sit next to her. I kept her personal space intact. She didn’t seem like the type to gain much comfort from a stranger’s touch. Instead, I decided my presence would be enough to calm her.

“She was so young, you know? I mean, I’m the young one. I’m the little sister, but she was only thirty-five. She had so much left.”

“And we’re going to make whoever did this pay, Susan.”

“Don’t they know who did it, though? That Ricardo guy? The weirdo neighbor?”

I kept my poker face solid. “He’s a suspect, yes, but there’s been questions brought up. I want to make sure we put the right guy behind bars.”

“Well, he got in a fight with my sister and Oscar. Someone caught it on camera. That’s kind of a big deal, isn’t it?”

“It is.” I was losing her. She was becoming defensive. The second she shut down, I knew I’d lose whatever bits of information she could have given me. “But, Susan, do you know if your sister or her husband ever made anyone else angry? For any reason? Maybe it was a car accident that wasn’t even her fault, or maybe Oscar argued with someone at work?”

Susan opened her mouth to speak but closed it before saying anything. I gave her the time to search her memory. I knew that her mind must have seemed like a postapocalyptic landscape. Thoughts would be hard to string together, entire memories even harder.

“Luanne was involved with someone else.”

Bingo.

“She was always very secretive,” Susan continued, sadness coloring her features while frustration painted her voice. Her shoulders slumped farther as she spoke, her hands held loosely in her lap. “I wish she opened up to me more. Maybe I would have known more. Who she was with. But she never told me.”

“That’s okay, it’s a start. This is a huge help.”

“It is?”

“Definitely.”

She took a breath, rallying herself. “Do you think maybe Oscar found out?”

I cocked my head. I didn’t like speculating with people so closely connected to the deceased. But I wanted to give her some sort of peace of mind. “I don’t have enough to think anything concrete yet, but I do know that I’m going to try my hardest to figure it all out.”

“It’s just so sad. Oscar had just gotten his promotion. Everything was set. Things could have been so great. He had just left on his first big work trip, too, a week before it all happened. He got flown out to California for a conference.”

“Do you know why your sister was cheating on Oscar, then? Were there any signs of trouble in their marriage, even though the future seemed bright for them?”

Susan took another deep breath. “They never fought. Not in front of me, at least. I mean, I didn’t see them that often, especially not in the last few months. They’ve been really busy with married life and work. They knew each other since we were all little kids. Oscar was our neighbor. He moved out of our small town and turned into a college graduate and brought Luanne along with him for the ride. She was looking into going back to school for nursing. They only just got married, a few months ago.”

So then maybe the man Luanne was seeing got jealous. Couldn’t take it anymore.

“Did she ever mention anything about this other man? Even just hair color or accent?”

Susan raked a hand through her thin brown hair. “No, I’m sorry. I wish I was more help.”

“Like I said, this is a huge help.”

Not the biggest help, but it’s a start.

“Okay, good.” She seemed content with that answer. I noticed her glance at the dirty clock on the wall. I could tell she was getting antsy by the way she sat on the edge of the couch cushion. This was a taxing thing, reliving your deceased sister’s memory for a detective. I didn’t want to add to her distress, but I did have a few more questions.

“How was the relationship between you two?” I already had a general idea through my social media research, but people always had a knack for showing their best sides on their Facebooks and Instagrams. No one saw pictures of the tears or the fears, only of the filtered vacations and carefully placed food.

“It was fine,” she said. Her eyes searched mine, as if it were her turn to find the answers. “She was my big sister. I loved her. She taught me everything; she was the person I wanted to become. She had everything. A nice place, the perfect man, a great group of friends. Ever since we were little, everyone could always tell she was my guiding light. Like I said, we hadn’t gotten the chance to spend much time together lately. If only I had known…” A cry got lodged in her throat. She coughed and sobbed at the same time. There was a near-empty box of tissue papers on the dirty side table. I reached for a tissue, almost knocking over a half-full glass of orange juice. I handed her the tissue, and she grabbed it with a soft thank-you and dabbed at her face.

“Okay,” I said, feeling like today was a wrap with Susan. I had her number, so I’d be able to reach her when more questions arose, and hopefully she’d be in a better mental state when those questions came around. I already felt like I’d earned her trust, and we all wanted the same thing: we wanted to find and punish the monster who did this. It paid for me to leave before she really broke down, potentially shutting me out for a while. “That’s going to be it for today.”

I squeezed my thighs and got up from the couch. I didn’t bring a notebook this time since I wanted to make Susan feel as comfortable as possible, so I’d get into the car and dictate what I’d learned for my records.

“Please, Detective, please, figure out who did this.” She got up from the couch, covering her mouth with her hand before another rogue sob escaped. “I thought it was all over when they said it was the neighbor. I just wish it was all over.”

She fell into me. I opened my arms and held her, letting her cry into my chest. I guess I was wrong about her aversion to physical contact.

All I could do was hold her while she let it all out. When she pulled back, her eyes were red and puffy, but the tears had stopped flowing. She managed a trembling smile and said goodbye as she walked me out.

I zipped up my coat outside of her place. The commotion at the police station had died down. I walked down the steps toward my car. When I got inside, I put my voice memos on hold and opened up my address book instead. There was one more person I wanted to meet with before today was over.