Chapter Text
Will.
The apartment is spacious.
Practically indulgent, in fact, compared to the shoebox-sized homes that have become the norm in New York City. Its windows face east toward the sun, with a perfect view of the sprawling concrete jungle below. For a deal this good, you’d think a bidding war would be raging at the front door. Instead, the unit sat listed at half-price.
“Mr. Hawkes,” the landlady began. “Are you sure you want this? People typically walk out after hearing its history.”
“I’m sure, ma’am.”
Apparently, eight years ago, something happened in this otherwise gorgeous apartment.
The neighbors unlocked its door to find a woman hanging from the ceiling fan, her face drained to a pallid shade of blue. For three days and three nights, the same piece of music played: Tzigane by Ravel. Classical violin crept through the walls and into the neighbors’ units until their patience wore thin.
It was only when the stench kicked in that their annoyance swiftly curdled into horror.
When Will first heard the story, unease entered his gut, just like the rest of the prospective tenants. Grief does not always belong solely to those who knew the dead. Sometimes it reaches outward, across years and across strangers alike, searching for any other heart capable of understanding its language.
In answering its summons, he found himself mourning the woman’s life too. A beautiful, human life—suddenly splintered like fine china. It was said that she left no note for family or friends. Only the sound of the glissandos on the record player accompanied her as she drew her final breath.
Still, he tried to steel himself against that unease, for the truth is that he did not have many options. His savings account was practically boring holes by the day. After walking out of his father’s home, he had to act quickly to find somewhere new. Somewhere his.
He decided that he would light candles for this woman at night. Perhaps he’d even play Tzigane for her. In another life, he thought, they might have been friends. He felt strangely certain he could have known her.
“Very well,” the landlady said at last. “I’ll prepare the lease. It’s for a one-year minimum, Mr. Hawkes. I do prefer tenants who intend to stay.”
“Don’t worry,” Will replied. “I won’t be going anywhere.”
“One more thing,” she said. “The walls between this unit and the next are thin. Be mindful of your noise.”
“Of course, ma’am.”
Lauren Sinclair—his childhood friend, former protégé, and perhaps the only person considerate enough to stage a “housewarming party”—arrived carrying a pineapple with the solemnity of a ceremonial offering. She placed it carefully atop Will’s kitchen counter.
“Consider it an old-school housewarming gift,” she said. “Sailors used these to show they made it back in one piece.”
He blinked at the fruit. “I can’t believe you carried that all the way from work.”
“Please,” she scoffed. “It’s not the only thing I brought.”
She grinned as she pulled a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc from her bag.
“This one came from my uncle's collection, so you are obligated to be impressed.”
Will let out a low whistle. “Tristan let you near his stash? I thought he kept that locked tight, if only to cut back his own drinking habits.”
“Actually, he practically shoved it in my hands when he found out I was visiting you tonight.”
“How nice of him.”
“You can thank him later. Though maybe wait until he's finished pretending the newsroom isn't imploding."
Will's smile faltered.
"So everyone's talking about it?"
"Will." Lauren gave him a look. "The News editor gets fired overnight after one argument with the chairman. What exactly did you think people were going to talk about?"
He busied himself reaching for the kitchen knife beside the sink. He should at least help with the pineapple she’d dragged all the way there.
"People get replaced all the time."
"Not by their own father.”
Silence settled between them for a moment, sharp and cold.
For as long as they have been alive, their families have been intertwined through business. Tristan Sinclair acted as editor-in-chief of Verity Post, the same news outlet where both Lauren and Will worked. Its shares were managed by Heavestar Holdings, a gargantuan conglomerate the Hawkes family controlled for decades, now chaired by Will’s father.
Which succintly brings us to why Lauren has been staring at him so pitifully.
“It’s been a riot at the office, you know,” Lauren said softly. “Your juniors are threatening to boycott their shifts.”
“Tell them they’d be idiots if they kept that up.”
“But it is completely absurd, Will!” Lauren’s voice rose with that familiar Sinclair fire. Her heels clicked against hardwood as she moved closer to the counter.
“He had zero grounds to drop you! In your entire time as News editor, you were nothing short of brilliant. First one in, last one out. Even my uncle was taken aback when the notice came down.”
Will shrugged, focusing on carving the pineapple’s hull. He knew they were going to have this conversation tonight, yet he somehow felt he cannot meet her gaze for it.
“Competent people get laid off every day. Perhaps father simply wanted a change in management.”
“Will.”
“What?”
“Don’t lie. You know it’s pointless with me.”
A laugh escaped him. Of course she’d say that. Lauren has always prized honesty above all else, catching a lie as effortlessly as a conductor hears a sour note in an orchestra.
He finished plating the pineapple and signaled for her to grab the wine glasses before heading to the dining table.
“Please, Will,” she pleaded again once they settled in their seats.
“What happened with your father? It’s not as if he can shock me at this point—we’ve known he was an arse since fourteen.”
He lifted the Sauvignon Blanc to his lips. Top notes of grapefruit and lime pranced on his tongue before the wine slipped down his throat with an acidic kick. Uncle Tristan truly did have fine taste.
When Will looked up again, he found Lauren watching him with so much care creased into her crows, as if he were a glass ball she’d catch anytime.
“You know,” he said, drumming his fingers, “I’ve always wanted to ask. Why did you switch to opinion writing?”
If Lauren noticed his deflection, she mercifully chose to let it slide.
“What do you mean?”
“Back in our trainee days, investigative reporting was your strength. It’s what you loved. But now, you’re always just behind a desk.”
She arched an eyebrow. “Is that a complaint?”
“No,” he insisted. “Your work is brilliant. It just feels distant, which doesn’t at all sound like you.”
Now, it is Lauren’s turn to avoid his gaze. She lowered her head to inspect the pineapple slices as if they might suddenly achieve sentience.
“Do you remember the Chow case?” she asked finally.
Will nodded. For a time, that case made Lauren infamous throughout the office.
They'd both still been new hires then. Lauren had been sent to cover the uproar around Kevin Chow, the accountant to half of Hollywood’s elite, who was found stabbed by his wife in their home. By then, the rumor that he had an affair with an actress had already hit tabloids. Most papers in the city held the same angle: cheating husband, enraged wife, open-and-shut murder.
But Lauren never believed it.
That night, as she sat in on the police questioning of everyone Chow had spoken to before he died, one man caught her attention.
“Tim Sake,” she said. “He did it. I know he did.”
Her mouth twisted bitterly. “But you already know how well I handled that. I lost it at the station.”
According to the transcripts, Sake was one of Chow’s closest friends. He said he only dropped by the house the day before for a poker game and left before nightfall. The timeline was clean. Too clean, perhaps, for Lauren’s instincts.
She must have heard the lie. By the time he started talking about how heartbreaking his friend’s death was, she was already standing. She grabbed him by the collar and demanded he tell what else he was hiding.
The room was left in a shock.
Reporters were not supposed to interfere with questioning, least of all reporters whose press credentials smelled like wet ink.
“It humiliated the publication,” Lauren said flatly. “Management gave an ultimatum. Either I’d never be allowed back in the field, or they’d fire me.”
“And that’s why you’ve been stuck in Opinion.”
“That’s why I’ve been stuck in Opinion,” she intoned.
She leaned back on her chair. “Even now, I’m still angry at myself for acting so stupid. I know Sake was guilty—but what proof did I actually have? A tremor in his voice?”
Will studied her over the rim of his wine glass.
“For what it’s worth,” he said, “I always believed you. Especially now, when I have even more reason to.”
Lauren’s brows drew together. “What do you mean?”
Will inhaled slowly, steadying himself.
“I think I’m stuck in the exact same spot as you. There’s zero evidence, but I feel so sure that someone isn’t who they claim to be.”
He held her gaze.
“Lauren,” he said carefully, “I think I know something behind Dylan’s death.”
Then, almost imperceptibly, something passed through Lauren’s face: she folded up all the parts that constituted the brilliant, spitfire Sinclair he knew—and replaced it with a version that is more neat, more suitable, more convenient to deal with.
She only became this version of herself whenever Dylan Rosenthal was mentioned, which is precisely why they spent a decade avoiding his name altogether.
“Is that why you got fired?”
“Yes.”
Will forced his voice to remain level.
“You know,” he continued, “the woman who lived before died in the same way he did. That’s why the apartment was so cheap. Nobody wanted it.”
“I knew it,” Lauren murmured, almost with a strange sense of vindication. “I knew it was just living in the back of your mind.”
“And you’re the same, aren’t you? Why did you get so angry when Sake lied about his friend’s death like that?”
Lauren looked at him then—really looked at him. Gold onto blue. Molten and unwavering. He had not felt the full weight of that stare since they were sixteen years old, dressed head to toe in black as they watched a coffin disappear beneath the earth.
“If you are going to start this, make sure you can see it through to the end,” she said firmly.
“It’s been a decade, Will. It’s about time we visited his grave without guilt.”
Guilt was a curious thing. Sit with it long enough, and you begin to believe that by claiming sorrow as your fault, then at least it might obey rules you can understand. After Dylan passed away, Will could only rage against the world for so long. Soon, like the steel driven into Caesar’s back, he curved the blade inward.
Perhaps that is why, during his commute home the week before, he couldn’t just walk past as he saw the sign for Rosenthal’s Florals being lifted from its hooks.
For a second, he thought he’d taken a wrong turn. The shop always seemed immune from time. Even after the Rosenthals lost their son, it stayed like proof that not everything dear could be taken at once.
“Uncle George!” Will called out to a man carrying a box of furniture through the doorway. “What’s going on? Are you… closing down?”
George Rosenthal looked up, his mouth parting in surprise.
“Will! Oh wow, it’s been a while!”
He gestured toward the dismantled storefront with an awkward smile.
“Well, business hasn’t exactly been great these past few years. Felt like it was time.”
The old man shrank under Will’s gaze, as though searching for soil deep enough to hide in. But he had nothing to feel embarrassed about. If anything, Will was the one who let years pass without visiting often after their son’s death.
And now here he was again, barging unannounced, like he had the right.
He pressed his lips together.
“Do you… need some help?” Will asked after a moment. “I just got off work. I don’t have anywhere else to be.”
Slowly, George’s face softened into a smile.
“Actually, yes,” he said. “My wife’s inside sorting through old paperwork. She could use another pair of hands.”
And that is how Will spent the afternoon with Auntie Angie, sitting cross-legged behind the counter. They waded through a graveyard of receipts, invoices, and sales reports—abandoned in careless stacks rather than being granted the mercy of a trash bin.
Yet about thirty minutes of sorting through the pile, he realized this graveyard also held forgotten stories, just waiting to be dug back up.
One receipt caught his eye.
September 18 2008. In-store order from Lauren Sinclair and William Hawkes. 5 packs of daisy seeds. 2 clay pots. Total: $47.55.
The gears in his mind clicked into place.
This had to be from his very first visit to this flower shop. He and Lauren had only been in third grade, their school just a block away.
After learning a science project required them to grow a plant, they snuck out during lunch and wandered into Rosenthal’s Florals. They spent fifteen minutes arguing over what to buy before a boy their age leaned over the counter to ask if they needed help.
That was how they met Dylan.
He recommended beginner-friendly daisies. Will agreed—but only after insisting on five packets in case he and Lauren somehow killed the first batch. Dylan accused him of being overdramatic, while Lauren looked delighted to finally meet someone who thought the same way.
Will smiled from the memory, reaching for another invoice.
February 14 2014. Order from Malcolm Evans. 1 bouquet of red roses. Delivery to Lauren Sinclair—Sinclair Residence, 19 East 64th Street, Upper East Side, New York, NY. Total: $90.50.
A laugh left him before he could stop it. That disastrous Valentine’s day was impossible to forget.
Some loud-mouthed boy in their grade had developed an enormous crush on Lauren, apparently captivated by what he described as her “lovely, pensive eyes.” He felt certain that an expensive bouquet would tip the scales in his favor and return his feelings.
Wil doubted that strategy so thoroughly that he bet Dylan five dollars Lauren would reject him before the roses even made it through the front door. Safe to say, it remained the easiest money he had ever earned.
Onto the next.
December 16 2016. Order from Heavestar Holdings Corporation. 1 wreath stand of white chrysanthemums. Delivery to St. Gabriel Memorial Chapel, Funeral Service of Dylan Rosenthal—
He froze.
Wait.
Slowly, he read the invoice again.
December 16. From Heavestar Holdings. To the Funeral Service of Dylan Rosenthal.
That didn’t make sense.
Dylan had still been alive then.
Will knew this because he had memorized every ridge and hollow with pathological precision. He remembered he was still there as the school year dragged its last legs towards Christmas break. He even remembered the three of them going sledding that same afternoon, snow soaking through their gloves while Lauren complained the entire way down the hill.
But the day he can recall most clearly is New Year’s, when he awoke to Lauren frantically calling him.
They found his body on 2nd Avenue, in the street behind his family’s shop and apartment. Twelve stories up, they said. That’s where he jumped.
Above him, the night sky had cracked apart with fireworks, one after another. Will wondered to himself—did he look at them too? Did they at least make him feel the world had thrown a party for him?
It was the last and loudest night of the year. He marked every detail of it so deeply into his brain that he could recite it in his sleep. So it doesn’t make sense. Why would anyone send chrysanthemums to a boy’s funeral before it happened?
Unless–
No. That was absurd.
“Auntie,” Will began, “did you make a mistake with this?”
Angie moved closer to take the invoice. For a moment, confusion creased her face, until color was drained away from it.
“Where did you find this?”
“Along with the rest. Didn’t you type it out?”
“I didn’t…” her voice faltered. “I don’t remember this.”
Will gave a nervous laugh.
“Okay, then I guess Uncle must have handled it?” he asked. “I mean, it’s understandable if he made a typo. None of us were in the right state of mind back then.”
“No, Will. We never knew about this. I know we didn’t.”
“Then who made it, if not the two of you? It was way before—”
“Yes, I know that.”
Her voice turned cold and sharp. Sharp enough for Will to falter. In all the years he had known her, he’d never heard her speak to him like that.
“Auntie,” he tried laying his hand over hers, “what’s wrong? Are you alright?”
“It’s just—” she began again. “Look, I knew Stefan sent flowers for the funeral, but I had no idea they were billed under the company name again.”
“Again?”
She went still, as though she regretted how far she had gone.
“Heavestar placed deliveries through the shop from time to time. It was your father who came to us about it. He wanted to help Dylan earn money for his college tuition.”
Will’s head spun. He didn’t know that. Why hadn’t he known that?
“Really? Father couldn’t care less about Dylan.”
“That’s not true. He came to the funeral, after all.”
That he did. Snow still dusted his coat when he arrived at the service in this very building. He shook Uncle Tim’s hand, then Auntie Angie’s, offering perfectly solemn condolences.
Eventually, he stood beside Will, resting a heavy hand on his back. In the thick of his grief, Will had taken it for a rare moment of genuine care—maybe for Dylan, maybe for him.
He only stayed for forty minutes, until an assistant murmured he had another engagement. His father often had assistants orbiting him like moons ‘round a planet. Will registered her as nothing more than background noise then.
Now, in turning the memory over, he saw the detail he missed.
A streak of red heels crossing the marble floor. Not toward the exit with his father, but toward the stairwell. Up to the apartment above the shop.
“There was a woman with him that day,” Will said suddenly. “She didn’t leave when he did. Do you know why?”
“Well… she needed some shop records. From the business we did together.”
“During a funeral?” Will asked, bewildered. “And why am I only hearing about this business now?”
Angie’s hands began to tremble. Each breath came up like there was a hole between her lungs. Will saw it clearly then: something had gone wrong that day, and she knew it.
“There were discrepancies with some orders, and they couldn’t get into the files. Because… only Dylan had access to them.”
Access. The word landed strangely.
Cold pinpricks spread from the nape of Will’s neck down to his spine.
“Like she knew,” Will said slowly, “he wouldn’t be around to give them up himself.”
For the first time in a decade, Will felt that same dread from New Year’s—that black hole which nibbled away at everything he had. He stood at the edge, knowing that once he stepped in, everything would be split into before and after.
“Auntie, I’m going to ask you something, and you need to be honest with me—”
“THAT’S JUST IT!” she finally burst out. “I can’t be honest with you!”
Will forced his voice to stay steady, because she was unraveling. Her pupils were blown wide, almost animalistic.
“Then who can?”
“Abel Sandman,” she said so softly he could barely hear it. “He was the funeral coordinator.”
Tears began to creep in Will’s eyes. Meanwhile, this woman, who had been more of a parent to him than his own, held his hands as though they were the last solid thing in a sinking world.
“Please be careful. Promise me, Will.”
At nine, she had taken him under her wing. Even now, from afar, it seemed she had never really stopped.
Tzigane just finished playing.
Not long ago, Will bid his goodbyes to Lauren. She wanted to stay, but it was late, and he insisted she had work in the morning.
Now, he was alone in the kitchen. For ten minutes, Ravel set everything ablaze. There was a cadenza that rose and collapsed onto itself. There were notes where strings jumped at mercurial speed.
It made him feel like an aristocrat trying to court trouble. And in fairness, there was little imagination required for that.
Whenever he closed his eyes and pictured his father, the sneer curling his upper lip was the first thing he saw. He once told Will that people desperate for answers were the easiest to manipulate.
“Give a man enough mystery,” he said, “and he’ll start feeding himself any story that feels like relief.”
Of course, he’d know a thing or two about how to manipulate. He built his life around it. Constructed rooms out of it, furnished them, lived in them, and expected his children to pick one and call it home. That is what maddened Will most: there was always another room you didn’t know.
He thought his father came to the funeral because he cared. But was his attention on something else entirely?
On the dark window above the sink, he stared at his own ghostly reflection.
He wanted a cigarette. He did not smoke.
He wanted his father to break. That was not new.
He wanted Dylan alive. That was impossible.
Yet what he wanted most was to be proven wrong. Perhaps he was just being delusional. His father was an asshole, but he did not want him to be anything more than what could surprise him. He did not want parts of his life to coincide like this.
His thoughts began to run until they no longer felt like his own. It skidded from one ledge to another: a step, a misstep, a woman in red shoes, a hand at the small of his back, a clause that forbids Angie from speaking aloud, a funeral, a delivery slip, a boy who suggested daisies to two children who were yet to understand loss.
He pressed both palms to his eyes.
Maybe he should sleep.
By three, he tried his bed. Four minutes, maybe less. Then he stood up again. Someone died in this place. Was it right for him to rest so easily?
He crossed back to the kitchen. He checked the stove without knowing why, checked the lock on the window, and checked the front door twice. The chain was in place. The deadbolt too. He had the urge to call Lauren, but that wouldn’t do any good. She’d only worry and come running back here, no matter her other responsibilities.
By four, he had given up pretending he was going to sleep.
If he fell asleep, he would see him again. He could see him wrapping a scarf around his neck, grumbling that he’d catch a cold while pretending he wasn’t freezing himself. He could see the shop window reflecting the three of them, much younger and brighter.
Then he could see the body behind the yellow police tape.
The room lurched. He braced a hand against the wall, breathing fast.
This is what they never tell you about grief: it is not sad all the time. Sometimes it is a very practical, very efficient machine for suspicion. It takes your love and turns it into pattern recognition. It makes you dangerous inside your own mind.
By five, the skyline began to pale. Somewhere below, taxis hissed through damp streets. Somewhere above, a neighbor was talking on the phone or making love. Daylight crept slowly into his apartment. It touched his hair, his skin, the countertops, the pineapple Lauren brought as an absurd tribute to a kingdom he was too tired to rule.
He fell back against the sofa. His head tilted toward the ceiling. It was an ordinary ceiling, flat and painted off-white. No fan or rope hung there now.
At six, he finally succumbed to sleep.
BAM!
A violent crash was heard beyond the wall, wrenching Will awake. From the neighboring unit, two voices were arguing.
“No, NO—KIERAN, YOU IDIOT!”
“YOU SAID FLANK LEFT!”
Will forced himself upright. A dull ache settled into his neck from the unnatural angle he’d fallen asleep in. He reached for his phone and checked the time. 3:30 PM.
Nice going, Hawkes, he thought. You’ve slept through more than half the day.
Something crashed into his side of the wall again.
“STOP THROWING YOUR CONTROLLER!”
“THEN STOP BEING SO BAD AT THIS ROUND!”
“I’M TRYING!”
The landlady’s warning resurfaced in his mind. Right. There was, apparently, a noise issue between these two apartments.
For a moment, he considered retaliating by pounding on the wall itself, but the idea felt childish and, more importantly, ineffective. The neighbors probably had no idea someone moved into the vacant unit beside them. He’d hate to be mistaken for a ghost.
Might as well introduce himself first.
An attempt was made to tidy his hair, as he slipped at once into the proper, golden boy persona. Out in the hallway, the ruckus was still audible, defying the laws of physics or courtesy.
He knocked on their door once, then twice.
“Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
“I think someone’s knocking.”
“That’s in the game—”
He knocked a third time, harder now.
The sound of electronic gunfire abruptly stopped. Footsteps padded closer, until the lock clicked open.
A girl stood in the doorway. She was small as a violet, yet there was something immediately intimidating about her gaze. Tawny eyes, with a lone mole tucked under the right.
Pretty, he thought, in his half-awake state.
“Yes?” she asked.
“Hi. Sorry to interrupt.”
Behind her, Will could see the source of chaos: a television screen paused mid-game, empty takeout containers, and a lanky boy sprawled halfway off the couch with a headset still hanging around his neck.
“Who is it?” the boy called.
“Door to door salesman,” she shot back, not taking her eyes off Will.
“If I was, I’d be a very poorly prepared one.”
That got her lips to quirk up.
“Right,” she said. “So?”
He cleared his throat. “I’m William Hawkes. I just moved into the unit next door.”
“Brave soul. I never thought anyone would actually take that place.”
“Neither did I,” Will gave a wry laugh. “Anyway, I only came to ask if it’s alright to keep the noise down? It just woke me up.”
“Woke you up…” she repeated. “Like from your nap or something?”
“Not exactly a nap. More like I fell asleep at six in the morning and—”
“Wait. Six in the morning?” She looked incredulous.
“Yeah.”
“And you woke up just now?”
“Yeah…”
“Right, I think we’ve uncovered a bigger issue here. Your life might actually be more of a mess than my apartment.”
She grinned, all cheeky at its corners. It was a joke. Obviously. It was clear she was just trying to get him to laugh with her. Unfortunately, said by a stranger he had only known for thirty seconds, it landed less like charming banter and more like a hit to his ego.
Because nothing about it was ironic—Will’s life was a mess.
His golden boy persona tore cleanly off bone. "I didn't realize my insomnia was your business."
“Oh god,” the boy inside the apartment muttered in second-hand embarrassment. “Kym.”
So, she’s Kym. Good to know.
“I—” A flush crept to her porcelain face. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
There was a pause where she seemed to be weighing whether to double down or retreat. She did neither gracefully.
“I was just joking. But we barely know each other. Apologies.”
Will’s tone softened. “No, it’s okay. I overreacted, I shouldn’t have snapped either.”
“Okay…” she said cautiously. “Truce?”
“Truce.”
Kym smiled. She pointed a finger to her apartment. “We’ll tone it down now, I promise. Guess I’ll see you around, new neighbor.”
“See you around,” he replied. A faint smirk crept on his lips as Kym awkwardly waved and shut the door.
His feet were about to turn south to his own unit when the boy’s voice—Kieran, he presumed—cut through the wood, already breaking the promise.
“KYM!” he screeched. “You’re such an idiot! Didn’t you recognize who he was?!”
Will perked up.
Against his better judgement, he pressed his ear ever so slightly to the door.
“Keep your voice down!” she hissed. “We literally just agreed to do that!”
“William Hawkes,” Kieran said, taking his time to roll over the H sound. “You’re the one from the paps—you should know this better than me!”
A pause. “Wait. Hawkes? As in—”
“Yes! As in Heavestar Hawkes! As in media empire Hawkes! As in—what is he doing living in your hallway, Hawkes?!”
Slowly, Will stepped away from the door, unease needling into his ribs.
What kind of spectacular luck did he have to move into this building with paper-thin walls, a ghostly history, and a next-door neighbor who worked in paparazzi? Even here, there was no clean severance from the name he’d been born into.
At least she wouldn’t be getting much of a scoop from him. Not when he had now turned into the recently disgraced Hawkes.
He had nothing left to lose in the hands of people like her, who made a profession out of cutting up people’s lives and flattening them into headlines that sell.