Story Excerpt

Apartment Wars
by Vera Brook

Poland, 1979

Warm sun filtered through the leaves and dappled the sidewalk as Helena walked back from the farmers’ market. In May, the linden trees bloomed all over the city, the same cheerful green fringed with white as the year before, as if nothing had changed.

Helena tried not to dwell on the dissonance. Julian wouldn’t have wanted her to.

It was still morning, barely nine o’clock, too early for her daughter to call, but she walked briskly, anxious to get home. A wooden crate of tart cherries, shiny and red, bounced on her arm. They were her favorite fruit, neither sweet nor sour but wonderfully complex, a problem for her taste buds to solve. The handle of the crate was a phantom of her husband’s arm inside her elbow, easing her nerves and offering reassurance, as he had always done when alive.

Julian had died two months ago. He was a Physics professor at the Polytechnic, where she had also studied but never earned a degree. They had been happily married for thirty years.

Helena’s pension as Julian’s widow was secure, outside the grasp of politics and petty rivalries at the Polytechnic.

But her apartment was another matter.

Located on the coveted second floor of a four-story building—too high for passersby to peek into her kitchen, but not so high that the stairs were a bother—the apartment boasted the enviable total of three comfortably sized rooms, each with a large window that admitted plenty of sunlight. The living room even had a balcony large enough to set up a beach chair in which to enjoy a cup of tea and a science journal.

As if that wasn’t marvelous enough, the neighborhood was neither too old nor too young, built with all modern amenities, but before the housing crisis made trees, flower beds, swings, and benches a wasteful indulgence. All the necessities were but a short walk away, and if your errand stretched further into the city, an electric tram would whisk you there and back.

Yes, Helena mused as she walked, no matter what spatial attributes you considered, the apartment was a treasure, rare and valuable.

And as with any treasure, the challenge was to hold on to it.

Especially if a lot of people knew about it, bitterly envied it, and would readily trade their kin to get it.

The linden trees fell away, their shade snipped off by bright sunlight like by a pair of scissors. Helena passed a crowded bulletin board, which made her frown, and followed the curve of the sidewalk, past tall bushes of blooming honeysuckle, toward her building.

And there it was! Her staircase—smack in the middle, fourth from either end. Her kitchen window on the second floor, with its lace curtains.

“Good morning, Pani Heleno! Done with your shopping already?”

A bench stood along the sidewalk, a forsythia bush framing it like a golden throne. Olga presided in the center, flanked by Klara and Antonia on either side. Knitting needles flickered in Antonia’s fingers. Olga was the one who’d asked the question, her sugary tone as always hiding a nettle.

Irritation flickered through Helena. She’d been hoping to avoid the Crows today. She lifted her crate of tart cherries mid-step. The trick was to keep walking. “Morning. Just the farmers’ market.”

But Olga stuck out her leg, blocking Helena’s escape. “Ha! You’re lucky. I can’t walk that far anymore. Varicose veins!” Olga hiked up her skirt and twisted her leg to demonstrate.

Helena stopped, the crate on her arm swinging forward.

Klara, also a widow, piped up next. “I make my son-in-law do all the groceries. It’s the least he can do, considering.”

“Uh-huh,” Antonia murmured without looking up from her knitting.

Klara’s apartment was on the top fourth floor. Cotton diapers, onesies, and bibs flapped endlessly on the balcony to dry, and occasionally flew away with the wind. Klara had given up the larger bedroom to her daughter and son-in-law after the baby, moving into the smaller and windowless study herself. A fact she brought up in every conversation.

Olga patted Klara’s hand with practiced sympathy. “You’re an angel, dear. Everybody knows that. Isn’t she?”

The last part was directed at Helena. “Yes. Naturally,” Helena said.

Klara gripped Olga’s hand and sniffled, tears at the ready. “So are you, dear! So are you!”

Olga and her husband, both retired, shared their two-room apartment with their middle-aged bachelor son, an engineer. Which meant converting the living room into their bedroom each night, complete with moving the dining table and chairs out of the way and unfolding the sofa into a bed. And then repeating the process in reverse the next morning. Olga not so secretly blamed their son’s failure to start a family on the space constraints. Adding to her bitterness, the apartment was on the first floor, so no balcony.

“Uh-huh,” Antonia murmured.

Helena’s gaze snagged on the knitting in Antonia’s hands, the silver needles racing around what looked like a slender tube attached to a cuboid shape in a vivid pink. What was it? A long sock?

Olga spoke again. “We do what we have to do. A sacrifice for our families. But no—it’s not natural.”

Another nettle. Helena looked up to find Olga staring at her.

“It’s not?” Klara asked. “But we love our—”

“No!” Olga said, her stare still fixed on Helena. “It’s completely unnatural. Love or no love, the birds need to leave the nest. But they have nowhere to go, that’s the problem.”

Helena stiffened, her mouth suddenly dry. It was about her apartment. Without Julian, she was the only occupant.

One person to three spacious rooms was a dangerous ratio.

Thankfully, Daria and her husband would move in with her soon.

Like on cue, a door slammed, startling Helena.

Someone was racing down her staircase, the feet pounding the steps. Then the front door slammed open, and two small, wiry boys exploded onto the sidewalk, the older one ahead.

Messy hair, scraped knees, shoes untied.

Marta’s boys.

Helena stepped out of the way, but the older boy swerved as well, his face half turned. The top of his head barely reached her elbow, but plenty of angry force propelled him forward.

The collision almost knocked her down.

Her hand gripped the boy’s shoulder. Normally, she wouldn’t get involved. They weren’t her kids. But today she was on edge, her fuse shorter than usual. “Watch it! You could hurt someone!” she snapped.

Far from showing fear or remorse, the boy knocked her hand away, glaring. “Shut up, you ugly cow! Don’t tell me what to do! I’m the man of the house!” And he raced off.

A collective gasp of shock came from the bench.

Helena spun after the boy, speechless. But the insult wasn’t over yet.

The smaller boy caught up to her, huffing from the effort of keeping up with his brother. He lowered his head, as if planning to ram into her, but lost his nerve and swatted at the crate of cherries instead.

The crate flew from Helena’s hand and hit the sidewalk, the cherries rolling in all directions.

“Yeah! Ugly cow!” And the boy raced after his brother, his heels kicking and arms pumping.

Helena watched the young offenders in a numb shock, the cherries like frozen drops of blood around her feet.

“Tommy! Danny!”

A young woman in a shapeless, unflattering dress and worn house slippers rushed out of the staircase, her cheeks red from shame.

Marta, the boys’ mother.

She anxiously scanned the scene but her disorderly charges were long gone. “I’m so terribly sorry, Pani Heleno. They are sweet boys. They didn’t mean it. Here, let me help you.” Marta dropped to her knees, snatched the crate, and started picking up the cherries.

“Sweet boys! That’s a laugh.” Olga scowled from the bench. “But what do you expect? They take after their father. He’s nothing but sweetness, judging from what we just heard.”

If Marta’s face was red before now it darkened to a crimson. But another emotion, harder to identify, glowed in her eyes.

She set the half-filled crate down and got to her feet. “I apologize again. But I have to find my boys. Make sure they are okay.”

And she shuffled away after her sons.

Helena glanced at the half-filled crate and the still spilled cherries. A sparrow was already picking at one, and more birds were eyeing the fruit from the bushes. The sidewalk was going to be a mess.

Helena had an impulse to bend down and finish filling the crate. But she stopped herself. It was Marta’s mess—not hers. So it should be Marta’s job to clean it up. And if she was smart, she’d make her boys do it.

“I have to go,” Helena said. “A phone call.”

“Daria, I presume?” Olga asked. “Isn’t she coming back to live with you? She and her husband?”

“Yes, they are! This summer.”

But even as she said it, unease cut through Helena. She had boasted about the plan to the Crows, shook and brandished it in front of them to scare them away and discourage them from scheming. But now she wished she hadn’t.

Like the birds they reminded her of, the Crows missed nothing. Always watching and crowing about what they saw, and swooping down to steal from you the moment you turned your back.

They were also bad luck.

Before Olga could ask another question, Helena turned and hurried home.

On the second floor landing, the door opposite Helena’s apartment gaped open. Marta must have forgotten to close it.

Helena hesitated. Did Marta have a key on her, or would she be locked out? Still, it didn’t feel right to leave the door open. The cramped apartment was an eyesore, with winter jackets crowding a coat rack in the tight foyer, and a mess of beat-up toys strewn over an old sofa bed, a buckling coffee table, and a faded rug inside the one visible room.

Helena reached for the doorknob, when a man stepped next to her, soft-footed like a thief. Blue eyes under dirty blond hair locked on her face. “No worries. I’ve got it.”

Helena recoiled as if burned.

“Oskar. Don’t you have a key?”

If Marta had any sense, she’d taken it away from him the last time he’d vanished for days. The apartment belonged to her and, thank goodness, they weren’t married.

“Of course, I do,” Oskar said. But he made no motion to take it out. “And may I say? Pani Helena looks lovely as ever.” He smiled at her.

His broad shoulders and boyish charm must have worked on some women, otherwise where would this arrogance come from? But Helena wasn’t fooled. Oskar was the kind of man who would shove her down the stairs, still smiling.

She turned away without a word and unlocked her own door.

Erwin, her orange tabby, appeared in the crack and hissed at Oskar. She nudged him aside with her foot.

Marta had better clean up all her messes before Daria arrived.

*   *   *

Helena barely had time to pour herself a glass of ice tea before the phone rang. She took a quick sip of the tea, then hurried to get the phone.

It was Daria. “Mom? I have great news!”

Helena’s heart leapt. She carried the phone to Julian’s office, clutching the receiver to her ear. She pictured her daughter and son-in-law at the airport, passports in hand and a cart full of suitcases between them, checking in for their flight home. Coming back from a three-year work contract in Sweden—at last.

“Yes?”

“Mom, I’m pregnant!”

Sturdy oak bookshelves lined two walls of Julian’s office floor to ceiling, each shelf crammed with books and papers. More stacks of papers sat on the large desk.

Helena sank into the reading chair in the corner. The image of an airport terminal lingered for a moment, now empty, before it faded altogether. Daria was pregnant? It wasn’t the news she’d expected.

“Honey, that’s . . . wonderful. I’m so happy for you. Tell me everything.”

Erwin jumped onto the desk. He sat down, folding his front legs underneath him as if to fit into an invisible box. His orange eyes settled on Helena, and he ceased all motion, a statue frozen in time.

Helena chatted with her daughter for an hour, hungry for every detail, and regretting, not for the first time, that they lived so far apart—over a thousand kilometers and a whole Baltic Sea between them. But Daria was fine. She was six weeks pregnant, the first doctor visit went well, she and her husband were thrilled about the baby.

All bittersweet music to Helena’s ears.

Daria picked up on it. “How about you, Mom? How are you holding up? Are you going to be okay?”

Helena waved her hand in the air, as if to swat away a fruit fly. “Me? I’m perfectly fine. Keeping busy, going for walks. You don’t have to worry about me.”

“That’s good, Mom. I’m glad. Because . . .” Her daughter hesitated.

Helena got to her feet, suddenly restless. “Because you won’t be able to come here in May. I know, honey! You shouldn’t travel in your first trimester. I perfectly understand.”

There was a sigh of relief on the other end. “I’m sorry, Mom. Maybe in August?”

Helena paced back and forth between the closet door and the bookshelves. Erwin’s orange eyes followed her. “Of course. Just take care of yourself. We have plenty of time to plan. Everything will be fine.”

But after they said their goodbyes and Helena hung up the phone, the weight of the news sank in.

August meant three months from now. A dangerously long time.

The housing authority was bound to get a complaint about Helena’s apartment before then.

Like any bureaucratic machine, the housing authority moved slowly, especially in the summer when most of the city officials eloped from their stifling offices to a seaside or lakeside vacation. But there was no guarantee. If someone pulled the right strings or greased the bureaucratic wheels just so, the order to pack and relocate to another apartment could come down like a hammer, swift and final. And worst of all—there was no way to find out.

Several stacks of Julian’s papers sat on the desk, waiting to be sorted.

“Off with you,” Helena said to Erwin, and the cat jumped off the desk and sauntered out of the room.

She sat down at the desk and pulled one stack of papers closer.

It was a mess—printed articles with notes in the margins, loose pages of notes, equations and diagrams in Julian’s slanted longhand, newspaper clippings. All mixed together without any order. A textbook example of high entropy.

If she had the space, Helena would hold on to every scrap, because each scrap brought back a different memory of her Julian. But she needed to clear the office so it could become a bedroom for Daria and her husband. And now—also for the baby.

She had another reason, too. A request from Piotr, one of Julian’s colleagues in the Physics Department.

He’d phoned her last week and offered to take Julian’s papers off her hands. He was particularly interested in any unfinished projects. Julian had often worked at home in the last few years. Had he been working on anything new? Piotr wanted to make sure all Julian’s work got published.

Helena was grateful. Unlike the others in the department, Piotr had always been agreeable toward Julian. But she still wanted to first go through Julian’s papers herself. It was her chance to say goodbye.

After all, her husband was a brilliant scientist. Helena knew it better than anyone. She’d been helping Julian with his research on and off for three decades: a willing listener and sounding board for his ideas; a trusted assistant when a particular reference had to be hunted down in the library; a first reader and editor of all his manuscripts. Somehow, even when still a doctoral student herself, Julian’s research had become more important to her than her own.

She’d passed her qualifying exams with high marks, and her dissertation research topic had been approved, so the performance had never been an issue. Neither had her passion for science or her ambition diminished. They were still there—but redirected.

One day, she’d simply realized what mattered the most to her. It was Julian’s scientific career—not her own.

After that, there’d been no point in staying in the department. She’d told Julian she was leaving the Polytechnic—although not the reason why.

Even so, Julian had been adamant against it. He’d urged her to keep going, to carry out her project and finish her degree. They’d already been engaged for a year, waiting for an apartment before they got married. But she’d made her decision to drop out, and she stuck to it. Julian had no choice but to accept it. Although, for the rest of his life, he treated her like a true colleague.

Helena never cared if she got the credit—as long as Julian’s accomplishments were recognized. She took pride and joy in the work they did together, and that was enough reward for her. Besides, Julian needed her.

But now everything had changed.

Who was she without Julian? A nobody. A retired homemaker. A professor’s widow with only a most tenuous link to the Polytechnic or the academic circles—not enough to confer any status or protection, should she need it.

And she would need it, she was certain. How else was she going to hold onto the apartment for the entire summer?

She turned in the chair to glance behind her. Erwin had found a bright patch of sunlight on the rug and folded himself into it.

“You’ll help me, won’t you?”

Erwin opened his mouth and meowed, pointy teeth flashing—then leapt straight up in the air, back arched and tail puffed up, at the sound of the doorbell.

Helena jumped up herself, a foreboding hitting her like an electric shock. Who on Earth was it?

She hurried to the door.

*   *   *

In the hallway, Marta bent over her sons, attempting to smooth their unruly hair. Now she straightened and gently pushed her boys forward.

“Good evening, Pani Heleno. My boys have something they need to say. Is that all right?” She anxiously scanned Helena’s face.

From the half open door behind her, a low hum of television and a smell of roasted chicken drifted toward Helena. She glanced at Oskar’s long form sprawled on the sofa bed, his feet propped on the coffee table, the shoes still on. Nice leather loafers, expensive. She wondered how Oskar could pay for shoes like that. As far as she knew, he didn’t hold a job.

Helena sighed and nodded. “Yes. I’m listening.”

Marta nodded back, visibly relieved. Then she rested one hand on Tommy’s right shoulder, the other on Danny’s left. “Go on, Tommy. You first.”

But Tommy, the older boy, only clenched his mouth shut, his gaze stubbornly down.

“Come on, Tommy. You’re a smart boy. You remember what we talked about. Tell Pani Helena what you told me. Go on.”

Slowly, the boy’s jaw relaxed, his mother’s voice melting his resistance. Finally, he looked up at Helena. “I’m sorry for my behavior,” he began. “I was . . . um . . . rude to you, and I . . . um . . . gave a bad example to Danny. So I hope you’re not mad at me because it makes Mom sad,” he concluded with feeling.

A smile lit up Marta’s face, and she quickly bent down and kissed her older son’s hair. Then she pressed the younger’s shoulder. “How about you, Danny? You wanted to tell Pani Helena something too. Do you remember?”

But before Danny could gather his courage and speak, a louder, adult voice cut in.

“Marta! Where’s my dinner? Get your sweet ass back here!”

Marta froze, her face and throat beet red.

Helena saw Tommy mouth sweet ass, and an uneasy mix of sympathy and exasperation washed over her. She had no doubt Oskar did it on purpose—a cruel three-in-one trick that humiliated Marta, undid her lesson for the boys, and made Helena cringe, a payback for the incident with the key.

Helena addressed the boys sternly. “I accept your apology, Tommy. And yours too, Danny. Now be good, and listen to your—”

But the TV drowned her words, the volume suddenly deafening.

“. . . And the penalty kick is in! Goaaal! GOAAAL!”

Before Marta could react, her sons spun around and raced inside the apartment.

Marta automatically started after them, as if an invisible rope pulled her, but forced herself to turn back. “Thank you, Pani Heleno. I was hoping to run to the market today but . . .” She shook her head, not quite meeting Helena’s eyes. “If I can’t get the cherries, I’ll pay you back. I’m terribly sorry.”

And Marta hurried inside the apartment, carefully closing the door behind her.

Helena stared at her neighbor’s door, utterly baffled.

What natural law could possibly explain Marta’s loyalty to a man like Oskar? What set of equations could ever capture it? Even the most challenging questions in quantum physics seemed perfectly tractable by comparison.

It would be a relief to immerse herself in Julian’s papers again.

*   *   *

The cellar was dark and had the musty, earthy smell of a hole in the ground, which technically it was.

Helena flipped the light switch and slowly descended the uneven steps, her hand brushing the chilly cement wall for support. At the base of the stairs, the corridor became a maze, with rows of rickety wooden doors extending in three directions like a grim, dingy gallery of mirrors, until they melted into the darkness.

A spider web hung in one corner of the ceiling like an impossibly fine lace. It looked like a flat surface but wasn’t. Silk threads extended backward in three dimensions, the original pattern repeated in multiple intersecting planes between the main web and the walls. A housefly was trapped near the bottom edge, but no sign of the spider.

Helena started down the main corridor, squinting at the unit numbers stenciled over the doors. The unit numbers corresponded to apartment numbers, but they were not in order. She hadn’t been down here in years. On a hunch, she turned right.

She reached for the next light switch and froze.

A large limp form lay motionless in the far corner of the nearest unit, visible through the cracks in the door. A body? But it was only a sack of potatoes, thank goodness.

Most storage units were barely wider than the door, and packed floor to ceiling with spare furniture, tools, fishing gear, and other random possessions that didn’t fit inside the crowded apartments. Faint morning light trickled through small windows near the ceiling, just above the ground on the outside and blocked with metal bars.

Helena found her unit, unlocked the door, and stepped in.

Daria’s desk and dresser stood along one wall, wrapped in cloth, next to carefully stacked plastic boxes full of her favorite children’s books. Pippi Longstocking, The Moomins, Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland. Joy pricked Helena’s heart. Now her grandchild could enjoy them.

Built-in shelves, made by Julian’s hand, took up the other wall, floor to ceiling. On the middle shelf, dozens of jars with Helena’s pickled beets, onions, and peppers stood next to the last few fruit preserves.

The thought of her late husband snapped Helena back into focus. She came down here for a reason.

Stiffly, she bent down to inspect the two bottom shelves, where assorted boxes hid in the shadows.

They were mostly reused appliance boxes, filled with Julian’s handmade gadgets and demonstrations for his quantum mechanics classes. He used to tinker all the time, and not just for science, either. Julian would roll up his sleeves and fix anything around the house. There wasn’t a vain bone in the man’s body.

But which box was it?

Helena pictured the box she remembered sitting on the floor in Julian’s office from time to time.

“There you are!”

The box was shaped like a cube. Made of sturdy construction paper, with the lid tightly on and secured with tape, it had no label. But she knew it at once.

The box was heavier than she expected and awkward to carry. She had to put it down to lock up the unit. And then put it down again at the bottom of the stairs, climb up, open the door to the main staircase, and walk down the stairs again to fetch it. But the time she locked the cellar door and hefted the box off the cement floor again, her back ached and her arms trembled.

“Let me help you with that,” a man’s voice said.

Oskar? The nerve of that man! Helena spun around, ready to tell him off.

But it wasn’t Oskar. The man wore a blue uniform and carried a bulging messenger bag strapped across his chest. The mailman.

Helena gratefully surrendered the box. “Thank you.”

“Of course.” The man was tall and lanky, his nose too long for his face, but his gray eyes glowed with intelligence, and his smile was kind.

Helena led the way up the stairs. She unlocked her door, hesitated for a second, then pointed at the narrow bench under her coat rack. “Right here is fine.”

The mailman stepped through the door, gently set the box down where instructed, and promptly stepped back out. Not as much as a glance into Helena’s kitchen. Kind and not nosy. She liked the man even more.

Why couldn’t Marta find a man like that?

As if Helena’s thought triggered a not-so-random shift in their branch of the multiverse, her neighbor’s door cracked open, and the back of Marta’s head appeared, her hair in a hasty ponytail.

“Tommy, you’re older, so I trust you to watch Danny for me.” Marta grabbed her purse from the hook, nearly dropping a large garment bag she was holding. “I’m just going two blocks. You can watch the cartoons until I’m back. I love you and I’m proud of you both, okay?” A note of anxiety cut through the affection in Marta’s voice.

Two high voices answered her.

Helena frowned. Marta was a seamstress, the hum of her sewing machine often drifting in through Helena’s open windows late into the night. Spring and summer were her busiest seasons, with orders piling up, anything from linens and work shirts to cocktail dresses and wedding gowns. Marta delivered her orders herself rather than asking her customers to pick them up.

Where the heck was Oskar? The least he could do was watch his sons.

But “the man of the house” had the disappearing act down to a science, never around when Marta actually needed him, but back again as soon as she got paid, so he could sweet talk her out of her hard earned money.

Marta closed the door behind her and faced the mailman. She blushed. “Witek.”

“Hello, Marta.” The mailman’s cheeks flushed too, although his eyes were bright. “It’s good to see you.”

Helena shamelessly kept her door ajar to watch the interaction. They know each other, and he likes her, she thought.

“I’m sorry but I’m in a hurry,” Marta said.

Witek pointed at the garment bag. “If you give me the address, I’d be more than happy to drop it off for you. My route covers anything two blocks from here.”

Marta blinked. “Is that . . . allowed?”

“Well . . . not exactly. But some trouble is worth it,” Witek said solemnly.

Marta’s blush darkened. “Thank you, but that’s not necessary.”

“I’m sorry. That came out wrong.” Witek twisted the strap of his messenger bag. “What I meant is . . . it’s no trouble at all. Marta, wait—”

But Marta slipped past him and rushed down the stairs.

Helena quietly closed her door, not to add to the man’s embarrassment. A moment ago, he reminded her of Julian—decades ago, when they had first started dating. She couldn’t explain why. There was no obvious physical resemblance. The similarity was more intangible, hovering just outside the reach of her senses.

It still made her heart ache.

*   *   *

The bulky device, when Helena extracted it from the box and set it down on Julian’s chair, looked like a home movie projector crossed with a radio. Two rows of knobs and switches underneath a small screen on one side, a large lens with an odd rectangular filter on the other.

The contraption looked patched together, a weekend inventor’s project rather than serious lab equipment, but just to make sure, Helena searched for the silver sticker that would mark it as the property of the Polytechnic. There was none. So Julian hadn’t borrowed it from work to never return it. He had made the device himself.

But when? And where? Down in the cellar? Right here in his home office?

Wherever it was, he had managed to keep it a secret from Helena, since she’d never seen the thing before. The box, yes. But she’d assumed it was full of old papers. It had never crossed her mind to check.

Now she wished she had, so she could have asked her husband some questions.

Starting with: What was the device for?

All Helena had to go on was a hand-drawn diagram and a data table, both buried in a notebook full of messy equations. The data table made her pulse quicken, but with the variables unlabeled, the numbers meant nothing to her. Calibration tests? Experimental data? But what was the experiment? What was manipulated, and what was measured?

Julian had always been a theoretician at heart, enamored of proofs and theorems, but purely theoretical work had been discouraged at the Polytechnic in favor of more tangibly beneficial discoveries. So, over the years, Julian’s research focused on laser technologies and geographical sensors, among other practical topics. His true passion, though, had always been quantum topology—or applying the quantum principles to low-dimensional manifolds in order to understand the nature of space.

Helena thought back to her husband’s last formal presentation at his department, and a bitter taste filled her mouth. Julian had tried to warm his theory-averse colleagues to quantum topology by outlining a handful of fundamental questions he found fascinating. But his audience responded with a snobbish, narrow-minded scorn. Disheartened, Julian never tried again. What was the point? His colleagues didn’t care.

Now, standing in her late husband’s room, Helena inspected the bulky device. Was it merely a clever laser projector to demonstrate, say, how combining two spheres into a torus changes the total curvature of the object? Or had Julian actually intended to test a specific conjecture in quantum topology? But how on Earth would he do that?

There was only one way to find out.

A long cord dangled from the device. Helena plugged it into an outlet by the door. The cord stretched all across the carpet, but this wouldn’t take long. Just a quick peek at what the projector showed.

She pointed the lens at the only wall not covered by the bookshelves or the window—at the sliding pocket door to the closet, painted cream to match the wallpaper—and switched the device on.

The small screen flickered on, but it was the laser light emitted by the lens that drew her eye. A single red line that became a pulsing rectangle when it hit the wall, shifting and expanding until it fit within the closet door with a few inches to spare on each side.

Several things happened at once.

A cheerful beep issued from the device.

A silent blast rent the air, the pressure hitting Helena from all directions as if an invisible fist squeezed her.

And an orange object bolted past her legs and straight for the pulsing lights.

“Erwin, no!” Helena cried.

But the cat had already vanished inside the dark closet.

Except . . . that wasn’t possible.

The sliding door was still shut. Locked, in fact. Helena saw the handle and the lock clearly, next to the dark rectangle framed by dotted lights, now so dim they were barely visible. The closet was always locked, and the key rested safely in the top drawer of Julian’s desk.

But if Erwin wasn’t in the closet, then where was he?

Helena saw him run through the dark door. She didn’t imagine it.

She took a step toward the ominous rectangle that had replaced the closet door and peered inside it. She could see nothing. The darkness was like a thick curtain. It appeared solid and flat from where she stood.

“Erwin, get back here,” she ordered sternly, although dread tingled her spine.

What if her cat was already dead, wherever he was?

Helena took another step forward and stopped. This is as far as she could go without some part of her body crossing the path of the faint laser lights.

Fear was never helpful, though. Calm logic was better.

If the cat went through that thing, then by definition it was a door and had to lead somewhere. A place. A physical location. All right. What else did Helena know about doors? Most ordinary doors allowed you to pass back and forth, in and out, but maybe this door only allowed movement in one direction? Not good. A door could be locked too. Some even locked automatically if you let them close behind you.

Oh no. Poor Erwin.

“Meow.”

Helena gaped as first the orange head, then the body, and lastly the bushy tail slipped out of the darkness.

Orange eyes flashed up at her with reproach. “MEEEOW.”

Then, with the formal complaint lodged in this fashion, the cat trotted past her and out of the room, indignant but unhurt.

Helena felt light-headed, relief colliding with a belated shock.

She gripped the edge of Julian’s desk to steady herself, resisting the temptation to sit down or, better yet, lie down and close her eyes. This was no time to lose her head. Something very odd had just happened, and she needed her wits about her to figure it out.

The cat was alive. That, alone, was extraordinary.

He’d gone through the “door” and back in one piece. The door that had no right to be there! In fact, he’d spent several moments on the other side, and the experience barely left a mark on him.

But where had he gone, exactly?

Helena’s head spun as she tried to parse it out. She thought of Ockham’s razor. What was the simplest explanation?

Space. It had to be a space of some sort.

Large enough for Erwin to turn around, since as nimble and flexible as he was, stealing outside through the narrowest opening in the window or the balcony door, he still needed room in three dimensions to fit through and execute the U-turn maneuver.

But what kind of space was it? What did it look like? Did it have the familiar coordinates—up and down, left and right, near and far? How big was it? What would it feel like to walk through it? And what if the space wasn’t empty at all?

Helena started to pace. The questions made her restless. She couldn’t recall the last time she’d been as intensely curious. It felt like a burning iron pressed to her skin.

What now? Research at the Polytechnic was never a speedy process. It would take years before any experiments were conducted and any of the questions answered. First, research proposals had to be written and reviewed, letters of support secured, budgets approved, publication credits negotiated, politically correct interpretation of results agreed on, and lucrative contracts for future applications divvied up. The sheer amount of paperwork . . .

Even if she was a researcher and could attempt the task, Helena was too old for this.

Erwin was fine.

She braced herself and marched through the doorway.

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