Tansy looked like she might cry, and Charlotte fought a long-suffering sigh. Instead, she forced a smile and chose to focus on the pleasant aroma of what smelled like raspberry-pepper jam currently mottling her sweater.
The secretary handed Charlotte her napkin, then retrieved her toasted bagel from the floor, and that was that. It was just a sweater, and Charlotte moved on with her day. She changed into a spare black blouse she kept in her office and surged forward, marked finals, went over her arrangements for the quartet’s rehearsal that evening. A normal Thursday if ever there was one.
At least that’s what she told herself.
At five o’clock, she turned off her computer, packed up her violin, put on her black peacoat, and tugged a black knit hat over her long salt-and-pepper hair. She headed out into the cold evening, the Upper West Side already bustling with holiday energy—lights framed shop windows, garland curled around lampposts, and there was a group of young carolers just outside Sakura Park—all of which she tried to ignore. She walked with her head down, her violin tucked like a treasure under her arm. She watched her feet, making sure she avoided anything that could potentially trip her, cover her in something sticky, or damage her person in any way.
When she made it to Elle’s building on Central Park West, she smiled to herself as she rang the bell, a silly kind of triumph swelling in her chest.
“Come on up!” Elle’s voice trilled from the box.
Elle lived alone on the top floor of a historic Upper West Side building called the Elora. Their grandmother, Mimi, the only family member Elle still had a relationship with and who was an actual actress in LA during the latter years of the Golden Age of Hollywood, had owned the large, sparsely furnished apartment since the 1960s but lived in LA full-time, as she hated the cold eastern winters in New York. In her absence, Elle was more than happy to take care of the apartment, a corner of which made the perfect rehearsal space for the Rosalind Quartet.
A buzzer sounded, and Charlotte stepped into the marble-floored foyer, a vast space that sported an ornate chandelier, a set of marble stairs, and one of those vintage cage elevators with a gate you had to pull shut yourself.
It was beautiful and glamorous, and Charlotte always felt likeshe was stepping into another era when she was inside. And now here she was, trapped—not in some glitzy age of stardom but in purgatory.
“Okay, my super is calling the fire department,” Elle said now.
“Seriously?” Sloane said. “He can’t fix it?”
“I don’t think he’s all that handy.”
“He’s thesuper.”
“Not so super at fixing shit, apparently,” Manish said.
Their feet shifted around at Charlotte’s eye level, but she tuned them out. She was going to be here forever. She lived here now. Just send down some bread and water and she’d make it through somehow. Christmas in the Elora’s elevator—not all that much worse than her actual plans, which consisted of DoorDash and triple-checking the itinerary for the quartet’s European tour their manager, Mirian, had just sent over that morning. One whole month starting in London on December 29, complete with guest lecturer events at the Royal College of Music and the Conservatoire de Paris. It was everything Charlotte had been working toward her entire life—international reach for her edgy interpretations of classics, her original compositions, a chance to prove that Charlotte Donovan was a force in the music world, that everything she’d given up had been worth it.
Everyoneshe’d given up.
A flash of white in her mind.
White everywhere—an intimate space with white twinkle lights lining every crease and curve, white flowers garnished with red winter berries, the crispness of her white suit as she waited…and waited…and waited…
Fuck. She pressed her fingers to her temples before yelling, “Get me the hell out of here!” Desperation clung to her voice, and she hated it, but she couldn’t change it either. She pressed herback against the far wall, closed her eyes, and waited…and waited…and waited…
Two hours later, Charlotte spilledout of the elevator and into Sloane’s arms. She tried to hold it together. She really did, but she clung to her friend like a kid, pushed to the absolute brink with zero ways to manage herself.
Still, she didn’t cry. She wasn’t a crier. Hadn’t even cried when she’d been left at the altar five years ago. Not right away, at least, and certainly not in front of anyone. No, that lovely response waited until two days later, when the manager at the hotel in Paris had called to see why she and her wife had not yet checked in to their honeymoon suite. Even then, she hadn’t let the tears spill over, but had squeezed them back where they belonged. In the years since, she’d learned coping mechanisms for when her moods went dark or stress tugged her edges a bit too taut. But December was always a tricky month to navigate, and the elevator…well, it was hard to hold everything in check when stuck in a four-by-four square of wood and metal.
“Sweetie, it’s okay,” Sloane said, freezing for a second but then pulling Charlotte close. “It’s over. You’re out.” She held Charlotte tightly, and Charlotte allowed herself to be comforted.
Just for a second.
Finally, she pulled back, rolled her shoulders straight, and took a breath. “I’m fine. It was fine.”
“Fine?” Manish said, holding a glass of red wine, his black hair messy, as though he’d run his hands through it over and over. “I nearly had a nervous breakdown.”
Elle patted him on the shoulder, their short, pale-pink locks swooping over one eye. “Yeah, Manny, real tough for you, buddy,what with the couch you sat on for the last ninety minutes and the whole bottle of wine you went through.”
Manish sent a brown hand through his hair again, then took another sip. “Half, at most.”
“Bottleof wine?” Charlotte said, her limbs still trembling a little. “Manish, we have rehearsal.”
“I said half!”
Sloane ignored him and folded her light-brown arms. “Honey, I think we can skip that for tonight.”
