She looked out the motel’s doors. She looked like her mother; that’s why she’d thought to take her hair down to try to hide the resemblance on the camera—to use it as a curtain—but of course it had been too late. Stupid to put herself on his radar. She didn’t even have a car—she couldn’t get away quickly. She took the room key from the clerk’s hand, smiled, walked back outside into the thick air. The thought of Taured showing up to her room didn’t scare her; it was the thought of not being prepared for him that did. The room was sparse and ugly, but cleaner than she had expected. She took off her shoes and sat on the edge of the bed. She fell back onto the white coverlet and, holding her phone above her face, she texted the group.
Won’t be at dinner tonight. Got stuck doing some tourist thing. Tell you about it tomorrow.
She hit Send and dropped her phone. Would they even notice if she didn’t come back to the room later that night? She doubted it. They’d accept her text because she was the strange, independent one, anyway.
She stripped down to her underwear and crawled under the covers, naked except for her necklace and exhausted from the day—the weekend—the month. No one knows where I am, she thought as she drifted to sleep…an honest lie.
17
Then
They let her pack her mother’s personal things into two plastic milk crates they found in the kitchen. Her clothes and shoes were distributed to the remaining women, which left her with some of her mother’s books, a Bible, two old photo albums and a box of trinkets that had no meaning to Summer. She watched as the women carried off the rest, fighting over her mother’s nicest shoes, which were too big for Summer. All she took for herself was her mother’s necklace, a simple gold chain her dad had given her when they got married.
“It’s not much but it’s real,” her mother used to say. Now it was the only real, physical thing she had left of Lorraine. When she put it on for the first time, the metal had warmed instantly to her skin, but when she reached up to touch it, the gold had been cool beneath her fingertips.
“You’re getting a roommate,” Ama told her the morning after she’d seen her mother’s body in the freezer.
“You mean a cellmate,” she said. These days, Ama seemed to love delivering news she knew wouldn’t be received well. Ama ignored her and prattled on about how it wasn’t good to be alone, that people were created to need each other. Summer barely heard her as she stared at the still-full lunch tray they’d brought to the room. There was a bowl of something that looked like gravy with three biscuits beside it. She picked up the iced tea and drank it slowly so she wouldn’t have to talk.
“But first, Sara would like to visit with you and express her sorrow at your mother’s passing. She is outside.” Sara’s parents had complete faith in her loyalty to them and Taured. If she was asking to see Summer, it could only mean that their precious daughter wanted to help. But Summer knew what they didn’t: that the girl behind the stoic facade was as angry inside as she herself was. She’d decided to forgive Sara, at least for the moment; she wanted to hear what the girl had to say.
She sat up straighter, nodded.
Ama left and a moment later Sara slipped in, closing the door softly behind her. With her came the smell of laundry detergent, underscored by sweat. Her nose was red, like she’d been crying. Summer studied her friend, glad to see her, despite her earlier anger. Sara was tall and ashamed of it—she rounded her shoulders when she walked and ducked her head to make herself look smaller. When she did look you in the face, she was pretty, or at least Summer thought so.
“I’m sorry.” Sara’s voice broke. She shook her head and tried again. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” She stayed where she was, head bowed, her guilt so painful to look at as Summer stood up and went to her. They met in the middle, clinging to each other as they cried.
Since the day Sara had invited her to eat with her parents, they’d been friends, co-conspirators and sisters. They didn’t give much away publicly about their friendship. Sara called it keeping things professional. In front of everyone in the compound, they barely acknowledged each other, but alone in the bathroom or dorms, they’d laugh and do their best impressions of the adults. Sometimes they snuck to the kitchens after midnight when they knew everyone would be asleep and stole the baked goods set aside for breakfast. They’d end their feast in the walk-in refrigerator, drinking milk that had come from one of the compound’s cows. They’d once gone into the freezer to see how long they could make it before they got too cold. Seven minutes, she remembered.