Putting the log back, she quietly rustled, touching a box of tissues, a few broken latches and curtain pulls. The cash register was next. She felt for the release button, catching the metal drawer before it made noise. It was mostly empty, except for some worn bills. She lifted it to find a checkbook underneath.
She picked it up, squinted at the name. Pickleweed Motel, it said.Proprietor: Willa Castle.Her signature was a scrawl underneath.
She stopped, scratching her chin.
There was the sound of footsteps from inside.
Ruby ducked behind the counter.
She could see a shape from the inside door, reflected in the motel window. It was Willa, wearing a nightgown.
“Is that you, Frank?” she called softly. “Should have never called you. I told you to leave her alone. She’ll be gone soon enough,” Willa said.
There was a pause. “Frank?”
Willa sighed, crossing the office. She rattled the front door, and checked to see that it was still locked.
“Guess I was wrong,” she said.
Ruby heard her shuffle back to her room in her slippers.
Moving quietly, Ruby reached for a new room key. Room 10. Then she slipped from the office, back down the walkway.
25.
Because Desirée had been a single mother, no one really knew her heart. She was too wise to burden her daughter with it. She had been alone for most of her life, but she was not lonely.
For most of her life, men had been an interference—static, not a pleasure. They did not envelop you with warmth and allow a flower to bloom. They were the arid desert. They were the clouds that block the sun, the drought that causes a crop to fail.
She had known to be careful. Women had so little protection. But she was not bitter. She was happy. She had her darling baby girl, she had Old Town, and she had life. It was a gift to cherish.
Which was why when she rounded a corner next to an alley one raw morning on her way to work and saw the man standing there, she knew all was lost. The car was waiting behind him, the trunk already cracked open. She had crawled into this life a mute animal, and fought to have a voice, and now this man wanted to take it from her.
All her thoughts from that moment on were of her daughter. She wanted to survive. Not for herself—for Ruby.
26.
Ruby quietly unlocked the door to room 10. It was spotless, the duvet pulled tight. She made sure the safety latch was bolted behind her, then, more important, took an extra security measure from her bag: a portable safety lock that was impossible to remove from the outside. She slid this under the door and set it.
She sat under the window with her bag and waited. She took her gun from her holster and touched it, briefly, to her cheek.
An hour later, she heard the truck. It slid up the road, its lights turned off. She sat up on her knees and peeked through the curtains. The man in the truck watched the motel for a moment, making sure no one else was there, then he backed slowly into a hidden spot on the road.
In a few minutes, she saw his shadow, loping across the parking lot like a wolf. She ducked again.
His shadow passed above her to the room she had left. With a deft move, he popped the lock to room 11, using the same technique she had used. He found the security latch set, because she was not a fool, but within moments he had disabled this, too, by sliding the same blade up under the latch and popping it out.
She waited. She could hear him rustling around on the other side of the wall, looking for her. She had left the back window open and knew he would find this, but he would have no idea where she’d gone.
Soon he came back out. She could hear him breathing outside, frustrated. Where was she?
I am nowhere, she thought. I am a missing woman.
27.
The bone knew what had happened to Desirée, but at first it didn’t know what to do about it. There was only so much, the bone had discovered, that the dead could do. There was a membrane between the dead and the living. You could yell at that membrane, and sometimes make it move, but it was always there. It was like a caul over the face of an infant. Or like a membrane caused by diphtheria or another disease, the way flesh yields and resists when poked by a needle.
The bone floated between the past and present. It visited those it had known, and many it had not. People think the dead don’t grieve, but they do. They grieve plenty.
