Lily walked slowly into the kitchen and set her small, red plastic flashlight on the laminate counter next to a pile of mail.
I turned to the small metal breaker panel set into the drywall near the entry closet and pried the door open with my thumb.
The switches inside the apartment’s panel were all aligned in the correct position.
Yet the apartment was entirely dead while the hallway outside was fully bright.
I pointed my flashlight at the base of the panel, where the thick black wires entered the metal casing.
The beam of the flashlight rested on a single dark breaker switch inside the apartment hallway panel.
My thumb pushed the heavy toggle, but it felt loose, clicking uselessly in the housing. The switch for apartment forty-two offered no resistance at all, hanging limp between the on and off positions. It was dead in my hand, a piece of plastic without any connection to the wires behind the wall.
I turned away from the panel and walked back into the kitchen, the yellow beam of my flashlight cutting through the heavy shadow of the small space. The air in here was already growing cold, holding the flat, stale smell of damp concrete that always seemed to rise from the lower levels of these old buildings.
On the laminate counter, right next to a loaf of bread with the wire tie missing, sat Clara’s cell phone. It was plugged into a white charger cord that snaked down to the wall outlet behind the toaster.
I tapped the dark screen with my thumb. The battery icon did not appear, but the plug was seated firmly in the base of the phone. If she had left on her own, this was the first thing she would have reached for.
“Her phone is right here,” I said, my voice flat in the quiet room.
