Page 2 of I Know You

Morgan scrunches her nose ever so slightly at me squeezing mayo onto my sandwich, and slides her packet over to me, since she prefers mustard only. “He could have disappeared from here.”

“You think he was kidnapped from his home?” I raise my eyebrows at her.

She huffs. “It’s possible, you know.”

I chuckle. “I think there’d be more evidence of that.” And there wasn’t. The condo was clean and orderly when we let the policemen in. No signs of a struggle anywhere. I remember wrapping my arm around Aunt Vi’s shoulders as we waited just inside the door. She had squeezed my arm, the worry for her tenant trickling out. I remember she liked him, and his disappearance broke her heart.

“I’m just saying.” Morgan lifts her sandwich to take a bite.

“Then move out here with me and keep me safe.” I grin before taking a bite of my own sandwich and then take my plate into the living room area and sit cross-legged on the floor. The sofa and chair combo I bought with the inheritance I got from Aunt Vi won’t be delivered until next week.

“It’s a twenty-minute commute and I don’t have a car,” she reminds me, setting her plate on a box before taking a seat. She leans toward me. “I’m never going to see you, Clara.”

“That’s because you work too much.” I take another bite of my sandwich.

She huffs again and shakes her head. After she’s finished chewing another bite, she looks at me with real concern. It’s a look she’s given me dozens of times since Aunt Vi died and I inherited the condo. “You’re sure about this?”

I look around the room, giving myself time before I answer. I think about the nights I slept here when we came to visit Aunt Vi, how those memories are some of the happiest I have of my family. I’m the only one left now, and it’s a depressing thought. This condo is the thing mooring me somewhere right now when I feel so adrift. “I’m sure.”

She reaches across the space between us and takes my hand, squeezing it with a nod. We finish our sandwiches and then the ice cream, staying up late to chat and laugh like we haven’t for a while. I want to soak up everything about our last night as roommates. I’m going to miss Morgan, even if I know this is the right decision.

But despite the exhaustion when it’s past two in the morning and we’ve been up since six moving my stuff, I can’t sleep. Waves of loneliness roll over me, which doesn’t make sense. Morgan is here with me, and nothing about my life is changing just because I moved. I’ll have my friends at my part-time job at the library and the online people I connect with for my blog and Instagram account. I’ll have Morgan and the friends we hang out with.

Maybe it’s that without Aunt Vi here, the condo still feels wrong. I don’t know how to shake that. I hold my breath to stave off real crying because Morgan will pounce all over that if she wakes up and realizes. It’s to her credit that she hasn’t used how hard this is for me to persuade me before—not with any seriousness, anyway. But she’s my best friend, the closest thing to a sister that I have, and if she thinks that moving out here is too painful, she’ll do her best to convince me not to.

But … was this not a good idea? Is it too soon? Six months seems like plenty of time to face all the memories, and the Mitchell family deciding not to renew the lease for another year felt like a sign, like it was time for me to embrace the place that had meant so much to my family. To my mother. To Aunt Vi.

Aunt Vi’s voice penetrates my mind, a line she repeated often in the days after my parents died. You are not alone, sweetie. You’ve got me.

“Not anymore,” I whisper to the darkness.

The Aunt Vi in my head gives me a psh and a wave of her hand.

I close my eyes and smile. Okay, okay.

Chapter Two

On Monday afternoon I stop by Target on my way home from my part-time job at the library and choose some simple white sheets, a white down comforter, and a couple more pillows until I can find something more fitting for the Victorian chic vibe that I want for the condo. When I get home, I strip off the full flat sheet and basic comforter from my old apartment that I’ve been using, heading straight to the big walk-in closet with them lumped in my arms. I swing open the door and glance around for the box Morgan got these out of a couple days ago. On Sunday morning I shoved a bunch of stuff in here that I didn’t want to deal with just yet, so the open box seems to have gotten lost in the shuffle. Most of these boxes are from my parents’ house, stuff I’ve had in storage for years. Now that I have a place of my own, it doesn’t make sense to pay for the storage to house such a small pile of mementos. But I’m not ready to go through them yet. It was hard enough after they were gone to sift through their belongings and find what I wanted to keep. So much of their stuff was destroyed in the fire.

I finally locate the box for the blankets, startled to see that it’s been pushed up against an exquisite mirror I hadn’t noticed before that’s leaning up against the left side of the wall. I’ll have to call down to the office later and see if it’s Ben Mitchell’s and it accidentally got left behind when his family cleared out the condo. It’s a gorgeous piece, and they might want it back. The woodwork on the frame resembles the ones in the lobby of The Villa—most of them carved by the original owner. Was this one of them? Maybe it came with the condo as part of the original décor? The office will know.

I run my fingers along the smooth wood and then lean over when I notice handprints in the dust on the surface. They’re positioned … weird. Not like Morgan rested her hand on it or something while she looked for the right box. Like someone put both hands, palm down, right in the middle of the mirror. I scowl at it.

The hands are also way too big to be Morgan’s.

My brain flashes to the man who was outside my door. He couldn’t have been in my condo, right? Why would he be? And why would he have stood here and put his hands on the mirror like this?

It’s dumb, and it’s just my mind overreacting.

I graze my fingers over the surface, then pull them back when something shocks me, shaking them out. Every time I’m close to mirrors, it’s like I gather extra static electricity. I’m used to avoiding touching them because of it, but I got lost in the beauty of this piece. And this felt a lot stronger than the normal little zings.

I toss the mass of blankets and sheets toward the box we got them from, not bothering to pack them back in. I’ll need to wash them anyway and put them away in the linen closet next to the bathroom. I pull out my phone to take a picture of the mirror so I can show someone at the office, then lean in closer to it to look at the weird handprints.

They can’t be Morgan’s, but what else makes sense? And why would someone just make handprints on the mirror? I put one hand on the mirror, palm toward it, like the handprints, to see if something strikes me about why someone would do that.

The same shock as before, but a lot stronger this time, shoots up my arm. I cry out in pain, losing my balance and flailing forward. I drop my phone as I fling my other hand out to stop myself from shattering the mirror. I fall forward, bracing for impact and hoping the mirror is sturdy.

Then I tumble right through it.