New York City, USA
April 2012

Said goodbye unnoticed

"Hello, Georgie."

Dropping the duffel bag on the pavement, I bend down to give George a welcoming ear scratch and he rubs his head against my calf in return.

"Been out romancing the girls again?" I ask him, as I let my hand glide over his back. "Or have you finally beat up that annoying tabby for good?"

(The tabby moved into the neighbourhood two weeks ago. George was not well pleased with the competition.)

"Meow," answers George and curves his back upwards.

"You want to go home and get some food?" I suggest, reaching out to grab hold of the duffel bag again. It's full of loaned clothes, most of them from Seraphina, with some key pieces from Nia thrown in as well. I slept over at their place last night and we spent the better part of the evening going through both their wardrobes and deciding what could work for me.

This because, while my parents upped my allowance to compensate for the loss of my other sources of income, they didn't make up the difference in spending money that had previously come from waitressing. Thus, there haven't been many shopping trips for me in recent weeks, not even to my favourite second hand shops. And with the lack of new clothes came the press reports chronicling how often I re-wore something in a fortnight (or "recycle" as that nice fashion blogger calls it) and while I know I shouldn't care, it does bug me, hence the raiding of my friends' closets.

"Meow," agrees George and bumps his head against my shin for good measure. Then, with a pointed look at me, he sets off along the street, tail held proudly aloft.

I hurry to follow (can't let His Majesty wait for the promised food, can I?), throwing the duffel bag over one shoulder and blindly searching my handbag for my keys as I walk. As we near the apartment building, I spot the usual contingent of photographers on the other side of the street.

After the frenzy of February, their numbers went down markedly, stabilising at around half a dozen which I can't seem to shake. I know most of their faces by now and have even started to observe some of their mannerisms. There's one who always wears sunglasses like some kind of long-lost Blues Brother, and one with a bewildering number of brightly-coloured sneakers on rota. Another one seems to be continuously playing phone games, only looking up when I venture close (I wonder how the sound hasn't made the others go mad yet), and one weirdly always crouches down to photograph me. (Initially, I thought it was to get a shot up my skirt, but he does it when I'm wearing jeans as well, so it might just be that he's aiming for an 'artistic' angle.)

It makes them appear more human, these quirks, though whether I like to look at them as humans or not, I haven't decided yet.

Upon seeing me, the photographers reach for their cameras, but there's no urgency to their actions. It's just any other day, after all, and they already know that the umpteenth picture of me in front of the very same apartment building isn't going to sell better than any of its predecessors. (I suppose someone might be able to spin the fact that I'm returning home in the morning after a night out with a duffel bag over my shoulder into a story claiming I'm having a secret affair, but I'm sure as anything not going to give them ideas.)

When he hears the cameras click, George swishes his tail back and forth and hisses at the photographers, the fur on his back rising in indignation and his ears folding backwards.

"It's alright, Georgie," I placate. "They won't harm you."

(Though I wouldn't mind seeing what George would do to anyone foolish enough to try.)

George looks at me in a way that leaves little doubt about the fact that he thinks I'm too naïve and that he's judging me for it.

"Sorry, Georgie," I smile. "Of course you're right. Better get inside quickly, right?"

Not needing to be told twice, George skips up the stairs and sits next to the still-closed front door, obviously quite impatient with me and my slow two-legged walk. Not wanting to upset him further, I hurry to unlock the door for him and he slips past my legs the moment I open it.

Shutting out the photographers, I let my duffel bag slide down my shoulder and set it down by my feet, as I turn to check my mailbox. There's nothing in there but a glossy catalogue advertising shoes I don't have the money to buy, so I just turn to follow George (who's already halfway up the first staircase and watching me reproachfully), when my gaze lands on Mrs Weisz's mailbox.

Through the little window in the lower right corner, something white is winking at me, meaning that there's obviously still mail in there. Which is unusual given that Mrs Weisz usually checks her mail first thing after breakfast. Not that she seems to get a lot, but whatever mail she does get, she takes care to open as soon as possible.

Leaving the mail be, I walk the few steps to Mrs Weisz's front door and press the button next to it. I can hear the doorbell ring inside the flat, but no other reaction. Not even when I ring it twice, then three times, keeping my finger on the button for a good ten seconds.

Something is wrong.

"Mrs Weisz?" I call, knocking on the door. "Mrs Weisz, are you there? Are you alright?"

No answer.

"Mrs Weisz?" My knocking has turned into a pounding, but inside the flat everything remains eerily quiet.

Can it be that she has gone out?

But she hasn't left the house in I don't know how long! Why would she do it now?

"Mrs Weisz? It's Rilla. Please open the door."

Nothing.

What if she has fallen again? What is she's lying somewhere, maybe injured, maybe unconscious?

Hesitating just for the briefest of seconds, I come to a decision. Grabbing the duffel bag off the floor, I turn towards the stairs, running up them as quickly as possible. (George, pleasantly surprised by my sudden haste, is ahead of me, jumping up the steps on light paws.) By the time I've reached my apartment, I'm hopelessly out of breath, but I don't give myself a moment to catch it. Fumbling with my keys, it takes me two attempts to unlock the door, the process not being helped by George winding around my legs, almost making me stumble.

The moment the door opens, he rushes past me and towards the kitchenette, turning to look at me imploringly.

"Sorry, boy. I don't have time to feed you," I apologise distractedly as I drop the duffel bag in the middle of the room and hurry to get Mrs Weisz's spare key from my sock drawer.

"Meow!" insists George, but I'm already half out of the door again. After all, he's free to leave through the window and catch himself a defenceless animal much smaller than him. And besides, he's got plenty of reserves. He won't starve.

I'm down the stairs even faster than I came up them, standing in front of Mrs Weisz's door in what can't have been more than a few minutes yet feels far longer than that.

What if she's seriously hurt?

With jittery fingers, I press the doorbell again, just in case I overreacted, and she was simply in the bathroom.

"Mrs Weisz?" I call out.

But nothing.

My hands are shaking so much that I drop the key in my attempt to get it into the lock and even after picking it up, I almost don't manage, but then, finally, mercifully, the door swings open.

"Mrs Weisz? Are you in?"

I am only partly aware of my body going through the motions of closing the door, dropping my handbag on the floor and placing the key on a side table in the hall. All my senses are concentrated on the flat, listening for some sound that tells me she's alright.

There's just silence. A strange, unsettling, impenetrable silence.

"Mrs Weisz?"

Almost out of habit, my feet steer me towards the kitchen first – and there she is!

She sits in her high-backed chair by the window as she so often does, and for a moment, I breathe a sigh of relief. But even as I do, I take a step closer and notice that she's slumped over in a strange way, with her body tilting sideways and her head leaning against the glass of the window.

"Mrs Weisz?" I ask cautiously. "Are you alright?"

No answer.

Which means she is… what? Asleep? Unconscious?

Crossing the distance between us in quick strides, I crouch down next to the chair and try to get a look at her face. Her eyes are closed and her mouth is slack. She looks wan, in the way sick people do. When I gently nudge her, she barely even moves.

"Mrs Weisz, this is Rilla. Could you, um… wake up, please?" As the words leave my mouth, I realise how foolish they sound, but there's no helping it.

Not that it matters anyway, because Mrs Weisz most certainly does not wake up. Which I take to meant that she must be unconscious, or something.

Feeling as helpless as I've ever been, I stare at Mrs Weisz's unmoving face for a second, frantically trying to think of what to do next.

I'm a doctor's daughter for crying out loud! My brother is going to be a surgeon and if family lore has it right, I had a great-grandmother who was an army nurse. Shouldn't I at least have an idea how to handle this?

I mean, I… I guess I could take her pulse, couldn't I? And then… call an ambulance, maybe? That would be a good idea, right?

Gingerly reaching out, I put my thumb on the inside of Mrs Weisz's wrist, making sure not to jostle her hand around as I do. It feels cool to the touch, which worries me, and for a moment or two, I can't find a pulse either, which makes me want to panic. But then I move my thumb a little and suddenly, there's a thud, followed by another. They're faint, but seem steady. If anything, I might say they're a bit fast, but… fast is better than slow, isn't it?

"No worries, Mrs Weisz," I tell the unconscious woman as I let go of her wrist and pick myself up from the floor. "I'll get help and then you'll feel better in no time."

In the hall, I grab the receiver of Mrs Weisz's landline. She still has one of these old-fashioned rotary dial phones and for a moment that throws me, but then I take a deep breath and stretch out a shaking hand to dial. (911 is 911 everywhere, right?)

I must have done something right, because seconds later a there's a business-like voice on the other end of the line, asking what they can do for me and I feel my shoulders slump in relief. Help will soon be on its way.

After having relayed Mrs Weisz's symptoms and our whereabouts to the operator and being assured that an ambulance will be with us as soon as possible, I carefully put the receiver down again. My hands, I realise, are still shaking and won't even stop when I ball them into tight fists.

The operator told me not to move Mrs Weisz, for fear of her falling from the chair and injuring herself even further, so for the next few minutes, I am left with nothing to do but wait. Hovering near the kitchen door, in a spot that allows me to keep an eye on a still unmoving Mrs Weisz, the outdated telephone and the front door, I count the seconds in my head, hoping that the ambulance will come quickly.

I've reached second 563 (though I'm not sure whether I didn't miss a few) when there's a loud and insistent ringing of the doorbell.

They're here!

Stumbling towards the front door, I hurry to press the buzzer and open the door. And if, until that moment time seemed to be moving too slow, it suddenly accelerates without any kind of warning as about five things happen at once.

"Where is the patient?" asks a wiry woman in a dark shirt, even as she pushes past me and into the hall.

For a second, I am too dumbstruck to answer, but finally manage to croak, "In the kitchen. Last door to the left."

"Please wait here, Miss," calls the woman over her shoulder and seconds later she and her colleague disappear into the kitchen. The door closes behind them with an ominous thud.

I am once more forced to wait, standing in the middle of the hall, nervously fiddling with the circle charm on my necklace and hoping it'll be alright.

But the door remains firmly closed and I can practically feel the minutes ticking by. Which can't be good, right? They wouldn't need so much time behind a closed door if it wasn't not good, would they?

Unable to just remain standing there, I find that my feet are carrying me over to where my handbag stands by the door. My fingers have fished out my phone before I even consciously decided to call anyone.

The call to Dad goes straight to voicemail and only then does it occur to me that at 9am on a Wednesday morning he's likely to be working. Mum, too, is bound to be holding a seminar of sorts and I just remember that Joy's at court, representing one of the women she met through that charity she's been in contact with. (Pro bono, of course.)

Ken's phone is switched off as well. Following an impulse, I select the number of Melissa, Second Undersecretary (or something), from my contacts and press 'call'.

"Hello Miss Blythe!" comes the chipper greeting. (So she's got my number saved as well, yes?) "How can I help you?"

"Good morning," I reply, only belatedly realising it's already afternoon for her. "Is he busy?"

"I'm truly sorry, but he's opening a factory as we speak," explains Melissa, sounding apologetic.

Should have foreseen that.

"Can I take a message?" asks Melissa, still with the cheerfulness. (The rational part of me knows she's doing her job and that she has no idea something is wrong, but the irrational part decides that her good mood is grating on my nerves.)

"Just…" I hesitate. "Just tell him that our mutual friend is unwell and if he could call me back when he has a minute?"

"Your mutual friend is unwell," parrots Melissa and I can almost feel her curiosity radiating through the phone, "and you'd like a call. Got that. Anything else I can do for you?"

But in that moment the kitchen door opens and draws my attention. I just manage a quick thanks to Melissa before cutting the call and dropping the phone into my bag.

"Is she alright?" I ask the somewhat portly man now stepping into the hall. The wiry woman follows him, but darts past me towards the front door without a word.

The man makes an indecipherable sound. "I'm sorry, but she didn't make it."

What?

"What?"

He shakes his head sadly. "She is dead, Miss. There was nothing we could do for her. She must have died sometime during the night, but the actual cause and time of death will have to be determined by the coroner."

What?

My head is spinning. I'm grasping at thoughts, but they all flutter away before I can take a hold of them. Nothing makes sense anymore.

"But… but… she had a pulse!" I protest. "I definitely felt a pulse. I didn't imagine that. There was a pulse and you should get back in there and help her!"

The man reaches out to put a hand on my arm, but I jerk away. "She has been dead for hours, Miss." He sounds so reasonable, the way he says it, and I want nothing more than to hit him. Or scream at him. Or anything.

"She was alive. She had a pulse!" I insist, my voice rising to a hysterical pitch.

I did not imagine it.

A moment passes, as the man seems to consider this. "Which finger did you use to check her pulse?" he finally asks.

What's that got to do with anything?

"I don't know. Who cares?" I snap. I want him to go back and help her, not talk nonsense at me!

"Was it your thumb, by any chance?" he wants to know, still speaking maddeningly slowly.

I throw my hands up on irritation and glare at him. "Yes, maybe."

"I thought so," nods the man. "You felt your own pulse, Miss. We never the thumb to check someone else's pulse, because you're more likely to feel your own pulse in your thumb, which can confuse the reading. I imagine this is what happened here."

For an incalculable number of seconds, I just stare at him, as his words chase each other around in my head.

They make sense.

I don't want them to, but they make sense.

Dead.

Stumbling sideways, I blindly reach towards the wall for support.

Dead.

"Can I help you, Miss?" asks the man, now concerned.

I shake my head. Then shake it again, as forcefully as I can.

"Are you a relative?" asks a new voice and I slowly turn my head to see the wiry woman standing in the doorway.

"No. I'm a –"

'Neighbour', is what I meant to say. "Friend," is what comes out instead.

"Do you know how to contact the relatives?" the woman wants to know. She takes a step towards me and I instinctively back away.

"I… I suppose I could… find out, maybe?" I stammer.

The woman nods, business-like. "If you could contact them, please? I've already been in touch with the coroner's office and someone will be here to take care of the body later today."

The body?

Looking past me at her colleague, the woman adds, "Are you coming? We just had another emergency coming in. Roadside accident with multiple casualties."

"Sure," agrees the man. Then he hesitates and when I turn my head, I find him looking at me. "Are you alright on your own here, Miss?"

Am I alright…?

No, I am not alright. I am not alright.

But even as I think it, I find my head nodding consent.

"Good. Take care." With which the man walks past me to join the woman who's already halfway outside. He closes the door almost soundlessly behind himself and just like that, I am alone.

Alone.

Because Mrs Weisz might still be there in the kitchen, but she's not really and this is a mess and shouldn't be happening and it's all wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Sinking down to the floor, I bury my face in my hands, pressing my fingers against my eyes and try not to panic.

Dead.

Dead, dead, dead, dead, dead.

It sounds surreal. It feels surreal.

It feels like it shouldn't be true and yet, deep down, I know it is. Perhaps I've known all along.

How long I end up sitting on the floor, face hidden from the world, I can't say. Maybe minutes, maybe an hour, maybe even longer. At one point, I am dimly aware of my phone ringing, but the very thought of getting up to talk to a person is too exhausting, so I let it ring until it goes silent on its own.

When I finally push myself up from the floor, I stagger past the kitchen door and into the living room. Standing in the doorway, I stare at the furniture in bewilderment for a long moment, until I remember what I need to do here.

Contact the relatives. Find a way to contact the relatives.

Gingerly I walk over to a chest of drawers and open the top one. It feels wrong, to go through Mrs Weisz things, even as I know that she can't mind anymore and probably wouldn't, even if she could. She'd want me to tell her family, wouldn't she?

The drawer holds nothing of interest, so I turn to the second one and, after that, slowly work myself through the contents of the living room. It helps a little against the whirling in my head, to concentrate on doing something useful, though I can't shake the feeling of intruding upon her privacy. (And I frantically hope that whatever I'm searching for isn't in the kitchen. Please let it not be in the kitchen!)

In the end I have my first interesting find in the bedroom, where the bedside drawer holds a faded green folder with a collection of papers and documents. Cautiously sitting down in the bed, I slowly go through them. A lot of them are just bills and stuff, but then I stumble upon what looks like a thin sheet of carbon paper with typical typewriter font upon it. It's apparently the copy of a letter and I just want to quickly check whether it's addressed to a family member, when one word jumps out at me.

Blythe.

Scanning the letter quickly, I feel my breath quicken. It is addressed to the New York Times and dated early January. And it is a letter written to defend me. To defend me.

I don't finish reading what she wrote. Halfway through, tears start blurring my vision, smudging the words into dark, shapeless forms that make no sense anymore. Not that they need to. She wrote a letter and she did it to defend me.

Me.

It takes me minutes to pull myself together enough to continue with the folder, though I make a point to set the letter aside. I hope it's alright with her if I keep it.

Still sniffling, but determined to do this last thing for Mrs Weisz and find her family, I go through the rest of the folder. It is only right at the bottom that something piques my interest again. Certificates. Official looking ones.

There's what looks like an old birth certificate for Rivka Abel, born in 1930. The birth place might be a town called Győr, or it might not. It's hard to tell, with the entire certificate written in what I presume to be Hungarian. The certificate of marriage for Rivka Abel and Michael Weisz is in English, having been issued in 1947 here in Brooklyn. Following it are two certificates verifying the birth of Hannah Weisz in June 1948 and her death in November of the same year as well as another death certificate for Michael Weisz, issued in 1959, with the cause of death listed as 'accidental'.

I didn't know she had a daughter who died.

How come I didn't know she had a daughter who died?

And where are the birth certificates for her other children? I know she has them, she's talked about them often enough, even though I've never actually met any of them.

Riffling through the last papers in the folder, I find no further certificates. Instead, there are Mrs Weisz's diplomas proving she got both a bachelor's and master's degree in engineering in the 1960s and a doctorate in the 1970s. (Did I ever know she had a PhD?)

I just think that that is it when I see the photo. It's the last object in the folder and it looks old. Depicted are mother and father with five children and the tiny black-and-white people appear very solemn indeed. Turning the picture around, I see that it's dated 1937 and it has names on them, relating to the position of the people on the other side. The names are written faintly in faded blue ink, but someone else must have later added birth and death dates in black.

The birth dates span from 1889 to 1934. The death dates are all in the 1940s. The only one without a death date is Rivka, born in 1930.

Does that mean…?

Can it be…?

My heart contorts at the thought.

Did she really lose her entire family before coming here?

But… but that can't be true, right? I know she's told me about coming here with her parents and her siblings. About how her brother was sick the entire time on the ship and how scared her parents were of being rejected at immigration. So, how…?

Also, didn't she say her mother's name was Abigail? Here, it is clearly listed as Hana.

Confused, I lower the photograph and let my gaze wander through the room, in search of something that might explain this.

This makes no sense.

This entire flat is filled with framed photos of her family and not one of them looks like it dates back to the 1930s. But how can that be, if her entire family died before she even came here?

Frowning, I get up from the bed and reach for the nearest frame. It takes me a moment to loosen the clips securing it but when I manage, the photograph falls out. Except it's not a photograph at all. It's… a newspaper cut out?

Why is this a newspaper cut out?

Confused, I turn towards the next frame, which holds a photo of Aunt Ruth. I distinctly remember the story of how Aunt Ruth insisted on making all her relatives go change if they dared to turn up wearing white after Labour Day. Taking the photo from the frame and turning it around, I expect to see the name Ruth written on the back. Instead, it says "Ophelia Stanley" in elegant cursive.

Who on earth is Ophelia Stanley?

Increasingly frantic, I pick up one frame after the other and pry them open. And I still continue long after the truth has dawned on me, in what might be a desperate hope that I could yet be proven wrong.

But it remains a futile wish.

When there's no more frames to check, I have to face the fact that none of these photos were real. They're a curious collection of cut outs, stock photographs and old photos with unfamiliar names that she might have gotten at a flea market somewhere. There are only two actual, genuine photos in this entire flat – the one showing Mrs Weisz and myself and the one from the folder.

Which means… none of this was real.

It was all made up.

All just… tales. Tales about people who never existed.

Standing in the middle of the living room and staring at the unruly mess of pictures and frames all around me, I don't know what to do. I don't even know what to think.

I am saved from my own thoughts by a sudden commotion out on the street. Part of me is unwilling to face real life, but the bigger part is glad to have something else to focus on instead of the horrible truth of what I discovered.

Peering past the curtains, the first thing I notice is how dark it is. (Have I really been here all day?) Secondly, I realise that the amount of photographers has at least tripled. (Maybe the ambulance drew them here?) And lastly, I spot a collection of dark cars with tinted windows coming to a halt in front of the apartment. The reporters immediately go wild.

Could it be…?

Someone emerges from the passenger side of one car and I immediately recognise Hanson. And before he has even closed his car door, I am already sprinting into the hall, pressing the buzzer and opening the front door of the flat with my other hand.

It takes less than a minute for them to enter the building. I am vaguely aware of several figures clad in dark suits, but my eyes immediately focus on the one person they're surrounding.

"You can't keep coming here unannounced," I tell him, though my voice sounds all weird. "You have appointments to keep."

"You called Melissa and then you didn't answer your phone," he answers. "I was worried."

I want to apologise, but find that I can't speak. There's just a sob escaping my lips and I know I am only moments away from finally breaking down.

Ken guides me back into the flat and when one of the suits tries to follow us, I hear him mutter an annoyed "just this once!" The man backs off, the door closes and I practically collapse into his arms.

"She's… she's…" I almost can't say the word. "She's… dead." It feels all wrong in my mouth.

Wrapping his arms tighter around me, Ken makes soothing noises. But I don't want to be soothed. I want to understand.

"And I… I went looking for… for her family. To tell them. But there is no family. They all died ages ago! She had no-one. All the pictures and all these stories… she made it all up. It was all… all wrong. Just tales. She didn't have children or grandchildren or anything. She… she had no-one," I manage around sobs. "She was all alone."

I look up at him, imploring him to understand even when I'm not making sense, and find his face etched with compassion and sadness alike. Raising a hand, he cradles my face, his thumb brushing away a tear that is immediately replaced by two new ones.

"She wasn't alone," he says quietly, touching his forehead to my own. "She had you."


The title of this chapter is taken from the song 'Love Is Just a Four-Letter Word' (written by Bob Dylan, released by Joan Baez in 1968).


A/N: I just want to take this moment to say a very special thank you to the amazing oz diva, who's been my dedicated and faithful beta reader up until now. Due to a very exciting change in her life, she won't have time to continue her great work, which is why beginning with next week's chapter, beta reading duties will be taken up by the equally lovely Alinyaalethia. Many thanks to both of you, for past and future help alike!