When we arrive at the complex, I don’t see her car in the lot. I wonder if maybe she’s found a new job, but when we approach her apartment, I notice that the little butterfly welcome mat that had sat outside her front door the one other time we’d been here is gone.
The blinds are wide open, and a single glance inside shows a completely empty apartment. Rudy looks as confused as I am. “Wait, this is the right number, isn’t it?” he asks, looking around.
I pull up her resume, still saved on my phone, and double-check the apartment number in front of us against her address. “Yeah, this is the right one. What the fuck, did she just skip town completely?”
“Maybe she did, maybe that’s why she left so suddenly,” Rudy muses, “Makes more sense than anything else I’ve come up with.”
He swivels suddenly and bangs on the apartment door across from the one that had been Ava’s. “Wait, what are you doing?” I ask.
He holds up a hand in a silencing “wait a minute” gesture.
The door swings open and a little old lady peers out from the doorway. “Hello?”
“Hi, ma’am, sorry to bother you, I was just wondering if you might be able to tell us what happened to the young lady who lived here across from you?” Rudy asks.
The woman frowns. “Oh, poor dear, it was so ugly. Apparently she lost her job, and that horrible woman screamed at her. Called her awful names, told her to leave-”
“Wait, wait,” I interrupt, “What horrible woman?”
“Mrs. White, the landlady here. Oh, she’s just awful. Nasty, nasty woman,” the old woman shook her head and clicked her tongue in disapproval.
“And she kicked Ava out?” Rudy asks, “Can you perhaps tell us when that was?”
“I’m sorry, dear, all my days blur together, I couldn’t say. I was going to offer the poor thing a place to stay, but she was gone before I got the chance.”
“Where could she have gone?” I wonder aloud.
“What about that friend of hers?” Rudy asks, “Natasha, maybe we could hunt her down.”
We thank the old woman for helping us out, and I wrack my brain for everything I can possibly remember about this Natasha girl. “She was a co-worker of hers at the restaurant, wasn’t she?”
“I think so. Maybe we try there first,” Rudy says.
But when we get there, we do one better than finding Ava’s friend. We find Ava’s blue Toyota parked in the lot, and her still in it.
She’s looking down at her phone and doesn’t notice our approach until I rap lightly on her window. She jumps, startled, and gazes at us with wide eyes. But she doesn’t exactly look shocked to see us.
Slowly, she opens the door and steps out of the car. “How did you guys find me here?” she asks quietly.
“We actually came looking for Natasha and got lucky,” I explain.
She smiles a little. “Smart, that’s where I’m staying,” she admits.
“Is that seriously all you’ve got to say to us?” Rudy asks, heartbreak ripping into his voice like broken glass.
Ava looks surprised. “Well, I mean, what is there to say? I wasn’t the right fit, right?”
“What makes you think that?” I ask incredulously.
“I came over on Saturday and heard the two of you talking. I heard you say it just ‘wasn’t right,’ and that there ‘wasn’t room’ for me,” she explains.
“What are you-baby, we weren’t talking about you,” I shake my head.
“Oh, bullshit, I literally heard you say you two were going to end up ‘right back where you were before, with no room for Ava’,” she says, putting air-quotes around the words.
“On the bed,” Rudy finishes for her.
“What?”