There are no big roads, no horns, no sirens, no shouts. Instead, there’s a heavy quietude. I don’t want to feel the tug of this place and all its promises. But I do. I know why my father loved it. Why he thought we could find a different way of life here.
Rewilding.
I give him a nod of acceptance. “Of course,” I say. “I’d love to.”
After all, what’s the rush? If that was you who wrote to me last night, Adam. If you are Unforgiven, then I am sure I have frightened you away by not offering you any promises. You’re probably long gone, and all this chasing I find myself doing will probably just end as it started, with me alone, a ghost, hiding behind a fake name.
Jones pats my shoulder in approval. “Everything is more manageable with a full stomach.”
I know you would agree with that.
My head swims. You, my father, my past, the dead girl whose name I stole, Bailey Kirk, his missing Mia, Melissa Farrow, Dear Birdie. But instead of chasing after you or them, I follow Jones Cooper down the long hallway.
There’s always time for lunch.
thirty
I’m still buzzing after my conversation with Jones, the past and present a spinning wheel in my mind. But lunch with the Coopers has me feeling more centered, calmer. Jones’s practicality, Maggie’s wisdom, grilled cheese and tomato soup—I am nourished and stronger for my time with them. And one thing is clear—it’s time to figure out everything that Bailey Kirk knows.
The Motel 8 is a flat, tidy place, a typical roadside establishment with a big sign and a vacancy light that has never been dark, a row of gray doors and square windows, curtains drawn inside.
I’ve passed this place many times and always wondered who might find occasion to stop here. Truckers, I guess, or outdoorsy types on their way to or from campsites, fishermen come to try their luck on the river a few miles away, hunters perhaps come to cull the burgeoning deer population. Private investigators chasing missing girls, following a trail that somehow led them to this isolated place. The waitress described Bailey’s truck, but I don’t see it, a black shiny thing, she said. The parking lot is mostly empty, just two other cars—a white Toyota, and a beat-up vintage VW bus.
What am I doing here? This whole errand has taken on a dreamy nonreality. Your disappearance, my conversation with Jones, thoughts of my father, this place, all of it on a Tilt-A-Whirl in my mind. I am untethered from the world I left behind.
My phone vibrates on the seat beside me.
Jax: On your way back?
She must be tracking me, seeing that I’ve left town.
Not just yet, I type.
The little gray dots pulse. Then: You promised.
I know. Soon.
Call me.
Wren, I mean it. Call me.
I exit the car and approach the office. A little bell rings and announces my arrival and a wizened old man peers up from a paperback book. His face looks like a catcher’s mitt, a lifetime of ignoring warnings about the sun damage. He pushes up his black-framed glasses and peers at me. His eyes are cartoonishly big behind his thick lenses.
“Help you, miss?”
“I’m looking for a friend,” I say.
He puts down the book, military fiction I’d say by the bold colors and the shadow of a soldier on the jacket. Its binding is creased, cover ripped.
“You’re pretty enough,” he says. “I bet you don’t have any trouble making friends.”
This is an example of a thing men shouldn’t say these days, somehow solicitous and insulting all at once. But I smile anyway, because he’s older with a big belly, and few wisps of gray hair on his head. This probably counts as charming in his book, his very old book written long ago in a language most of us would like to forget. It might be too late to school him; old dogs, new tricks and all of that.
“Actually, I am looking for one specific friend,” I say. “A man named Bailey Kirk.”
He points at the ledger on the counter and I follow his finger to Bailey’s name, written in a wobbly cursive.
“Hasn’t been here long,” says the old man. “Might be around for a while, he told me. Quiet. No trouble. Gone most of the day.” He nods over to a drip machine that has seen better days. “Early riser. Comes in for the coffee.”
So much for privacy protection.
I am about to push my luck and ask which room he’s in, but then I notice the board of keys behind him. There’s only one missing. Number 12.
“What time does he usually get back?” I ask instead.
“Hard to say.” He nods to the phone I have in my hand. “Aren’t you kids in constant touch these days? Can’t you send him a text or something? If he’s a friend of yours.”