Chapter 11: The Gold Band

Ingrid's POV

I looked at the foil package rolling to a stop against the wall, and I did not look at Mateo.

"Go upstairs," I told him. "Both of us need you out of this."

"Ingrid."

"Not now."

He went past me without a word and climbed the stairs, and the door on the landing above us closed softly.

Then it was Marisol and me in a cold gray stairwell at one in the morning, with a bulb buzzing overhead.

She bent and picked up the tamales and held them against her chest.

"You were with my brother," she said.

"Yes."

"I came to bring him dinner. I do it every Thursday night."

Her voice cracked.

"I didn't know. He never said, and I never would have..."

"He's not who I'm here about."

She went still.

I had practiced the sentence in the elevator.

Now I said it in the plainest voice I owned.

"Suite 1408. Tuesday at 3:17. A white robe."

She did not move.

"And Wednesday at three, when you pulled the dressing room door open six inches."

For a long moment she did not breathe.

Then her knees gave way, and she sat down hard on the bottom stair with the foil package in her lap.

"Oh God," she said. "Oh God, Ing."

"You can call me Ingrid."

It landed, and I watched it land, and I did not feel better.

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