Chapter 20: The Penthouse

On Monday morning, the doorman let Dani into the penthouse without asking for a single thing.

"Ms. Kehoe," he said, and touched his cap.

"Thank you."

"I mean it, ma'am. I watched the whole thing on my phone in the lobby. Half the building did."

He rode the elevator up with her, and he did not say another word, but he stood very straight.

The apartment was exactly as she had left it.

The same gray couch.

The same view of the Sound.

The same glass of water on the dining table, with a black pen lying at the bottom of it.

Preston's Montblanc.

Nobody had touched it in twenty-four days.

She took it out, dried it on her sleeve, and put it in a trash bag.

Then she went to work.

She had come for four things, and she took them one at a time.

From the cabinet by the window, her chipped blue mug.

From the closet shelf, the old backpack with her jeans in it.

From behind the bookshelf, a framed photo of her mother at the Pinecrest picnic table in a paper crown.

And from the bottom drawer of the desk, her first blue-switch keyboard, wrapped in a hoodie.

She held it against her chest for one second.

Then she put it in a box.

Glenn had come with her, and he was in the kitchen, loudly looking for snacks.

"This man has seventeen kinds of mustard," he called. "Seventeen. And no bread."

"Don't touch anything that isn't mine."

"I'm touching the mustard."

"That's fine."

The front door clicked.

She knew the sound of it.

She knew exactly whose footsteps came across the marble, quick, then slow, then stopping.