“You’re welcome!” Dean says, lifting a hand with complete sincerity.
“Tell me the truth. Do you sleep with the key chain under your pillow?” I ask gleefully.
“What key chain?” He shoves it into his pocket. “There’s no key chain. Maybe you have a fever. Go make a snow devil outside to cool down, and don’t come back into the room until you’re ready to drop the whole key chain thing.”
Tom’s hands are full with the bags once more, so I open the door as he maneuvers both suitcases back out into the storm.
I’m about to follow him when I hear Dean greet the couple who were waiting behind us with a smile. “You’re just in time, I’ve only got a couple rooms left.”
I whip my head in his direction. “A couple? You said you only had the one?”
He shrugs and winks. “What can I say. I’m a bit of a romantic.”
Tom pokes his head back in the front door, clearly impatient. “You coming, or what?”
I want to reply: Or what.
I want to tell him that Dean does have another room. That we’ve lucked out, and that if we spend fourteen dollars on a felt pickle key chain, we won’t have to sleep in the same room.
Instead I find myself nodding. “Yeah. I’m coming.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
TOM
December 23, 11:44 p.m.
“Oh, now this is very nice,” Katherine says with a thick layer of sarcasm, turning in a slow circle and surveying our motel room. “Spacious. New. Not at all frigid in here! And what does that smell remind me of . . . Oh yeah. The bus.”
I manage only a grunt in response to her sarcasm and drop our suitcases and bags into an unceremonious pile in the middle of the floor.
“What do you suppose they call this paint color,” Katherine says, reaching out a gloved hand to touch a wall and then wisely thinking better of it. “Dirty diaper?”
“It’s definitely dirty something,” I say, gingerly pushing aside the ugly floral curtains until I can find the old-fashioned thermostat in the window. I turn the heat to high. I hold my freezing hands over the vent hoping for some warmth but get only a mildewy draft.
“You know what I always wonder about these kinds of places?” she says, sounding in remarkably good spirits.
“Have you been in these kinds of places often enough to warrant an ‘always’ in that sentence?” I ask, shrugging out of my wet coat since it’s only adding to the persistent chill.
She ignores my rhetorical question. “I always wonder if that paint color was as hideous when they first slapped it onto the wall, or if interior design standards have changed over the past hundred years. Or take this carpet, for example . . .”
“I will not,” I say, purposefully not looking down. “I’d prefer not to think about it.”
But Katherine is persistent, the way she always is when a particular topic captures her fancy, and continues the badgering. “Do you think they thought, Let’s go with the ugliest combination of brown and green that we can find, or was brown-and-green carpet the height of interior design style back then?”
“Fine, I’ll play.” I face her, hands on my hips. “Third option. The carpet was only brown to begin with, and the green is some sort of growth that’s taken over. Or the other way around. The carpet was originally green, and those brown parts you’re seeing are actually—”
“Okay, okay, I get it!” Katherine says, waving her hands wildly in a stop gesture. “It’s best not to think about it.”
“Thank you,” I say tiredly as I drop onto the edge of the bed. One of two beds. Gross as this place is, there’s at least that going for it.
At least now when I explain my current predicament to Lolo, I won’t have to find a way to drop “one bed” into the conversation. Lolo is as trusting and rational as they come, but even she has limits.
Not that I’d have shared a bed with Katherine. For . . . a lot of reasons. I’d have slept in the dubious chair in the corner. The floor. Even the snow, which probably would have actually been warmer than Kates—
I frown at the thought, which feels knee-jerk and almost defensive. Just yesterday, if I had thought about Katherine at all, I wouldn’t have hesitated to describe her as cold.
But these past several hours, being in her chaotic orbit once again, I’m forced to admit that she is a lot of things, but cold isn’t one of them. Not when you wiggle your way beneath the surface to a woman who is funny, loyal, and complicated.
She keeps in touch with my family.
Now that the shock of that has worn off and the irritation that my family kept it from me has faded slightly, I feel . . . confused. Katherine always got along with my family, but I guess I figured it was out of duty or something. That she still maintained a relationship with them after our divorce doesn’t exactly gel with the impossible, unfeeling woman I’ve tried to remember her as.
“I think I’ve figured it out,” Katherine says thoughtfully as she struggles to peel off her wet coat. “It’s not so much that they thought, What decor will look nice? but more, What will best camouflage the bloodstains and black mold?”
I sigh. “I thought we weren’t going to think or talk about it?”
“Right.” She opens the rickety closet door to hang her coat but finds no hangers. “You have to admit, though. A black light would be illuminating in more ways than one.”
I’m looking at my phone and don’t respond. I have a flurry of messages from Lo, each more panicked than the last at my lack of updates. And my family has now joined in on the concern.
My mom thinks I’ve been kidnapped, my brother wants me to know that Mom held out until 9:00 p.m. before finally letting the family eat the Bolognese without me. Kayla wants to know if I need to talk. Meredith thinks I’ve killed Katherine and wants to know if I need help burying the body.
And my dad—what do you know, he does text—wants to know if I need money or a lawyer.
“Everything okay?” Katherine asks, studying me.
I look up. “I missed Bolognese.”
Out loud, the thought sounds childish. And though Katherine would have every right to mock me, she instead comes to sit beside me on the bed.
There are several inches between her hip and mine. But I’m still aware of the proximity anyway, and maybe a little grateful for it. Hellish as this day has been, at least I haven’t been in it alone.
“I’m tempted to tell you that it always tastes better the second day, as leftovers. After the flavors meld together in the fridge.” Her voice is quiet. “However, I know that it’s more about the moment than the dish itself. I’m sorry you missed it.”
“Thanks.” I lean forward slightly and stare at the floor. Sure enough. Brown and green.
“How’d Lolo like pasta night?”
“She’s a vegetarian.”
“Ah. I was going to guess no carbs,” Katherine says.
I wince because Lolo is that too. Katherine must have caught my reaction because she lets out a light laugh but, once again, opts not to mock. “How’s she getting along with your family? First meetings can feel . . . big.”
“I have no idea, Katherine. I’m not there.” I hate myself a little for snapping at her when she’s clearly trying to be nice, but it feels crucial, somehow, that I don’t let her too close.