Chapter 14: The Table

"Good morning," I said into the doorbell, before he could.

Finnegan was sitting against my door, and he went still.

"Good morning, Maeve," he said, and I heard him smile.

I did not have long to enjoy it.

Down the hall, Declan's mother was banging a serving spoon on a pot lid.

"Everyone out," she called. "Committee meeting. Now."

My phone showed doors opening all along the thirty-first floor.

Neighbors shuffled out in coats and slippers, thin and gray, and they lined up against the walls.

Britt came out of 3101 last.

Declan's hand was flat on her back, steering her, and the guest room key swung from his other fist.

The new smoke detector above her head was gone, and a bare wire hung from the ceiling.

She did not look at it again.

"We have a problem of trust," Declan's mother said.

She held up her clipboard.

"One of us has been feeding information to the woman behind that steel door."

Every head turned toward my apartment.

Finnegan's shoulders tightened against my door.

"Who?" a man from 3112 asked.

"I'll tell you who." She pointed at Finnegan with the spoon. "Our facilities engineer. The man who keeps the lights on."

"Ma'am," Finnegan said, standing up. "I've kept your lights on for four months."

"You've kept her light on, too. Every night, outside her door."

"It's a hall lamp."

"It's a shrine." She turned to the crowd. "Do you know where he was the night we voted to open that door? He was at my table."

I felt my skin go cold.

"He ate my soup," she said. "He thanked me for it. He sat there and he listened to every word, and he said nothing against the vote."

"I said plenty," Finnegan said.

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