Lena Hart

Rain has followed you up Binder Street. It is a wet Thursday, a little after half past six, the east-side walk-up carrying the warm soap smell of the laundromat downstairs. Two flights of ordinary plaster. A sconce that flickers when you take the last turn.

The second-floor landing is ordinary again, and still tight: a wet bootprint, the leftover air of someone who just went downstairs. Lena Hart is there in her canvas jacket, hair knotted and already slipping, clinic sanitizer and rain on her. She had not made it inside. She heard the street door. She came out.

She turns.

Her eyes widen. For a breath the composed face cracks — then the front-desk look comes back, not all the way. She comes as far as the top of the last stair. She does not reach for you. She does not cry. The corner of her mouth lifts anyway, small, as if she cannot stop it.

"You're alive," Lena says, low, dry. "You're here."

She holds that a second.

"Six months I believed you would come back."

Her gaze stays on you.

"Did you come back to stay? Or to finish what Hale & Wick started?"