Why didn’t you tell me about Nina?, I type, my fingers shaking.

What?

About Nina. The case study. You were one of Dr. Severin’s test subjects. You told her you had PMDD.

Kit. No. You’ve got it wrong.

What is going on with you two? What are you doing to me—

We shouldn’t be texting.

Meet me at the lab now.

She doesn’t reply.

Within twenty minutes I’m back at the lab, hunting for her.

The hallways empty and echoing, I look in the lounge, the prep room, the ladies’ room, Dr. Severin’s darkened office. I don’t dare break the tape to G-21.

The only place left to go is the vivarium. The animal unit and its honeycomb of rooms, cage wash, prep, necropsy, freezer.

I don’t see Serge. It’s after six and the last junior lab tech is leaving. He waves to me through the glass, swinging his backpack.

When he is gone, I step inside, slide on a paper coat, a pair of shoe covers, as if Serge is there, nodding and smiling his approval.

Walking through the space, I can feel my phone buzzing in my pocket.

Where are you?

The only movement is the constant scurrying and scampering from the cages. I stop at the feed room, which I haven’t set foot in since Serge scooped clumps of Panda Garden mice from the floor.

Vivarium, I text back. We need to talk.

Standing at the feed-room door, I hear something, a movement. A shuffle. The shush-shush of shoe covers on concrete.

I step inside.

Everything is whirring. The ventilation system, but also a trio of standing fans that someone—Serge, or the maintenance staff—put in there days before, to get rid of the mouse carcass smell.

At the center is Eleanor, her back to me. The heat screaming up the pipes and the trapped, fetid air blowing everywhere, yet she’s wearing a thick wool coat.

Paper flapping, window blinds shirring, everything is moving, her straw-colored hair pirouetting around her like a ballerina’s tulle.

All I can think of, seeing her, is the undergraduate who died a few years back, her long locks catching in the lab’s metal lathe, spinning her around tighter and tighter, her neck pressed against the machine until she could no longer breathe. (Rapunzel, Rapunzel, Zell snarked. That’s why the ladies shouldn’t be in the labs.)

“Eleanor,” I say, walking toward her. “Eleanor, are you okay?”

Back still facing me, she doesn’t move, her shoulders hunching higher in some odd, animal way. Like the wiggle of a garter snake.

“You shouldn’t be in here,” I say. “We had an infestation. The smell…”

Finally, she turns. All that prettiness is gone, knotted tight in the center of her face. Her fingers tug at her coat’s winking buttonholes.

“I was leaving—Alex’s parents land in an hour. But I got turned around. Then I saw someone,” she says. “Or thought I did.”

“Probably the junior tech,” I say. “I can show you out.”

She looks at me, blinking twice, three times, like she can’t focus. “They’re bringing the dogs in,” she says. “The state police. There’s only one reason they bring dogs in.”

Suddenly, I feel painfully sorry for her. Because she’s right and because it’s only going to get worse.

“Let’s get you out of here.”

I move toward her, trying to direct her to the door.

“They asked me something,” she says, not budging. “The detectives. They asked if I thought Alex might be involved with someone.” She’s still looking at me, wiping her face on the rough wool of her coat. It’s a statement that’s also a question.

“I don’t think he was that kind of guy, Eleanor,” I say, my voice a magnificent deceit, so magnificent it frightens me. “Alex, he—”

“He was always drawn to people who were weak. Maybe that’s what happened here.”

“What?” The fan whirring past us again, Eleanor’s hair whipping wildly like some comic fright wig.

“Even unstable. Maybe he thought he could help her.”

For a strange, fleeting second, I find myself wondering if this is true.

“Her?” I say. My phone starts buzzing in my pocket.

Her bright eyes are fixed on me, big and spiraling. “And this person,” she says. “This unstable person. I think she may have done something to him.”

“No, Eleanor, I’m sure that’s not—”

“So was it you?” she asks, so suddenly, so plainly I think I’ve misheard.

“What?”

She’s staring at me intently now and I’m afraid to move my eyes, to look at anything but her.

“I heard them talking. Those guys, your coworkers. Saying you were Alex’s lab wife.”

“That’s a joke. That doesn’t mean anything.”

“That you were at a bar with him on Thursday night.”

I don’t say anything. The fan lashes past once more, thunderous now.

“I just need to know,” she says, her voice low and desperate. “Please. Was it you?”

“No,” I say, so easily I surprise myself.

She doesn’t say anything, her face gleaming with sweat, her coat gaping open, its silky purple interior glaring at me.

“It wasn’t me,” I say. “And I don’t think anyone’s done anything to him. I really don’t.”

I say it as firmly as I can, as firmly as a doctor might, as Dr. Severin might, firm and resolute.

“I don’t know,” she starts, her fingers to her temples. She backs away, one step, two. And in that moment, I see the large fan behind her oscillate, its blade catching one wheaty hank of her hair.

I grab her so hard that she cries out as I pull her toward me. It’s after she stumbles forward—knocking the cord loose, the fan shuddering to silence—that I hear the sound. The groaning above us, the fan no longer drowning it out. It seems to be coming from the ceiling, the dimpled panel from the infestation, its edges shorn, a hole in its center leading to some dark interior. I think of the mice plummeting from there just a few days ago. Serge’s dutiful care of their remains even though they weren’t his mice, or even lab mice at all.

I look up and that’s when I see it, my heart halting.

“You need to go,” I say.

Because I don’t want her to see what I see, which is the thing hanging from the narrow space between the sagging panel and the wall. The pale blue flap of Alex’s linen shirt.

“There you are,” a voice says. It’s Diane, pale as a cadaver in the doorway. “Your taxi is here, Eleanor. To take you to Alex’s parents.”

We don’t say a word to each other until Eleanor’s steps have faded on the concrete, until we hear the elevator chime and carry her away.

“Diane,” I say, and my eyes lift again to the ceiling.

Her eyes lift too.