Page 56 of Sexting My Ex’s Dad

An older woman stands in the lobby doorway holding a set of keys and a folded stack of mail. She looks at me with suspicion first then recognition second. “Are you looking for Athena?”

“Yes,” I say. “I’m Dr. Clarke.”

She steps out onto the sidewalk and shuts the door behind her, shifting the mail to one arm. Her mouth tightens like she’s deciding whether to speak. “She left.”

“When?”

“Early,” she replies, giving me a beady once-over from the rim of her glasses. “Before lunch. Maybe late morning. She was moving like someone had a clock on her.”

I take a moment. “Where did she go?”

The woman shakes her head. “I don’t know,” she says. “She didn’t say. She didn’t even look at me properly, and that girl always looks people in the eye.”

I glance toward Athena’s unit door down the corridor, visible through the lobby glass. “Can I see the apartment?” I ask.

Maybe I’ll find something that’ll lead me to her and then I can explain. Surely I didn’t say anything bad enough to have caused an event of this magnitude?

The woman hesitates. “She’s not here,” she says. “And there’s a new lock.”

My eyes snap back to hers. “A new lock?”

She nods. “I had my handyman install it,” she says, watching my face carefully. “She asked this morning. She said she didn’t want anyone coming in behind her.”

The woman purses her lips and frowns at me. “It was all so rushed. She looked like she was escaping something, especially since she packed very light. I could tell since she had only one suitcase.”

I stare at her. “That’s not normal.”

The woman lifts a shoulder. “It was strange,” she admits. “She looked pale. Not sick, just…tight. Like she was holding herself together.”

I force myself to speak slowly. “Did anyone come here for her?”

The woman’s eyes narrow. “No.”

“Did she mention an ex?”

The woman snorts. “Not to me. But I’ve heard her on the phone sometimes, and I always thought whoever that man was sounded like trouble.”

Trouble.

I step closer to the lobby window and look up the stairwell again. “Athena,” I say, like she might hear me through the walls.

The woman shifts. “Sir,” she says, and her tone softens slightly. “If you’re here to bother her, you’re hours late.”

I turn back to her and my voice comes out low. “I’m here to help her.”

The woman studies me. “You look like you mean that,” she says finally. “But I honestly don’t know anything more than what I told you.”

I pull my phone out again and scroll through the last messages between Athena and me then stop at the last thing she said the night before.

Long day. I thought she was tired.

I should’ve listened.

I should’ve stayed.

I should’ve told her if she needed something from me, she could’ve named it and I would’ve done it. Instead I sat across from her and told her things that cut her to her core.

I look up at her window again. Nothing in the building shifts to suggest she’s hiding inside.