"I can. They're on my account."
"But how am I supposed to — I need — what about —" I'm sputtering, which is something I never do.
"You won't need them," he says calmly. "I'm giving you a weekly allowance. Enough to cover food, essentials, anything reasonable. And the motel is paid for upfront, so you don't need to worry about that."
I turn to him. "Motel?"
"Yes. There's a motel in town. I've booked you a room."
"You've booked me a motel room. In Duster."
"You can't drive, Sloane, so you can't commute. You need to be near the sanctuary. The sanctuary is in Duster and Duster has one motel. It's not complicated."
"Have you seen this motel?" I ask, my voice rising. "Have you looked it up? Have you read a single review?"
"I don't need to read a review. It's a place to sleep. You'll be working all day and sleeping at night, and you won't be doing much else. You'll get five hundred dollars a week. That's a lot more than what most people have to spend."
I want to scream. I want to open the car door and roll out onto the highway. I want to rewind to the night of the wedding and put down the third glass of champagne and stay at thevineyard hotel and let Tyler have his bridesmaid and never, ever get in my car.
"Dad," I say, and I hate that my voice is shaking. "Please don't do this. I've just done four days in jail. I've been strip-searched. I haven't slept. My face is plastered all over the news. I am at my absolute lowest point and you're taking away my credit cards and putting me in a motel."
A truck passes going the other way and the Mercedes shudders slightly in its wake.
"Hand them over," he says.
"Dad —"
"Sloane."
I open my wallet and hand them to him. They're just credit cards but it feels like I'm handing over a vital organ.
He takes them and slips them into his shirt pocket. "Thank you."
6
MAGGIE
The bar is called Rosie's and despite the cute name, it's not charming. It's a flat-roofed building along the highway between Duster and Cawley with a neon sign that buzzes. The pool table leans slightly to the left, which everyone who plays on it knows and nobody does anything about it. I've been coming here since I turned twenty-one and in all that time the only thing that's changed is the beer on tap.
I sit at the bar and order a beer, telling myself this is going to be fine.
Her name is Cassidy. We matched on an app three days ago, which is how dating works when you live in a town of nineteen hundred people and the queer women within a fifty-mile radius could fit in a minivan. The app shows me the same faces on rotation — women I've already met, women who live two hours away, and women who ghost me after three messages.
Cassidy is from Cawley, which is forty minutes north. She's a dentist who recently moved there for a job. She likes hiking and her dog, who features in four of her six photos. She seems normal and normal is all I'm asking for at this point.
I take a sip of my beer and look around. Rosie's on a Thursday evening is about as lively as you'd expect — a handful of regulars at the bar, two guys playing pool, a couple in the back corner sharing a plate of nachos.
The bartender is a guy named Doug who's worked here since before I started coming. He's seen me on enough of these dates to have stopped asking how they went. He just nods when I come in and pours my beer and leaves me alone.
Cassidy walks in at ten past seven. She looks like her photos with auburn hair, freckles, and a cute smile, which is already more than I can say for the last three women I met through the app. I know I look like mine; my pictures don't even have a filter. Dark hair, dark eyes, brown skin from my mother's side and from spending every day outside. My mother is Mexican and she gave me her looks and her stubbornness. According to her, I have a smile like Julia Roberts, which she brings up every time she thinks I'm not using it enough.
"Maggie?" My date holds out her hand. "Cassidy. Sorry I'm late, I had a last-minute patient. Someone chipped a tooth on a popcorn kernel. The drama."
I smile. "Must be an occupational hazard. Do you get a lot of popcorn emergencies?"
"You'd be surprised. Popcorn, ice cubes, people who think they can open beer bottles with their teeth…"
"Guilty," I say, and she laughs.
