head. Nobody could be trusted. Not after everything that had happened. The less Zoey knew, the better off they’d all be.
Her eyelids fluttered again, and she descended into a black, dreamless sleep.
* * *
She was awakened by a sharp metallic rapping on her car window. “Ma’am? Hey, ma’am? Wake up!”
“Huh?” The sun was shining in through the windshield.
Maya began whimpering. “Letty? I’m hungry.”
“You can’t sleep here, ma’am.” It was a man’s voice. He was peering at her through the driver’s-side window. He was wearing aviator sunglasses, and some kind of dark blue shirt with a badge pinned to the breast pocket.
Despite the heat inside the car, a cold shiver ran down her back. A cop!
She shook her head, trying to dispel the cobwebs. “Huh? I wasn’t sleeping.”
“So what, you were passed out drunk? With a kid in the car?” The sunglasses obscured his eyes, but he was youngish. Late thirties, very tan, very judgey.
“Letty?” Maya again, her voice pleading. “I need to go pee-pee.”
She ignored the cop and turned to her niece. “Okay, baby. We’re gonna go inside the motel now, and find you a bathroom. Can you wait just a minute?”
She turned to the cop, trying to tamp down her fear and annoyance. “Look. I’m totally sober, just really tired. I’ve been driving all night, and I pulled in here about an hour ago. I was waiting for the motel to open, so I could get us a room. Now, can you please go away, so I can take my little girl to the bathroom?”
“You didn’t see the no-vacancy sign?” He pointed at it.
“I figured somebody would probably check out this morning.”
She opened the car door and swung her legs out, but he was blocking her way. “There aren’t any vacancies,” he said. “They’re full.”
“If you don’t mind, I’ll just go inside and speak to the manager myself,” Letty said. “Besides, I really need to find my child a bathroom. Okay?”
“There’s a Citgo down the street,” he said, pointing.
“Would you let your kid use the bathroom there? The parking lot is filthy.”
Maya was wriggling, trying to unfasten her seat belt. “I gotta goooo,” she wailed.
Letty opened her door all the way and got out, sliding past the cop. She opened the back door, extricated Maya from the car seat, balanced her on one hip, and grabbed her purse and phone.
“Excuse me,” she said, not bothering to turn around, race-walking toward the motel office. It wasn’t just Maya who needed a bathroom now.
She glanced backward just as she reached the door. The cop was standing by the Kia, hands on his hips, watching.
Letty yanked the plate-glass door open and an unseen electronic bell dinged. There was a front counter, with a blond fiftyish-looking woman standing behind it, talking into the phone. She looked up and frowned.
“Are you the owner of that Kia out there?” the woman asked. “I’m just getting ready to call for a tow truck.”
“Bathroom,” Letty said tersely. “Please? My little girl…”
“Pee-pee,” Maya wailed, right on cue. The kid’s timing was flawless. Like her mother’s, Letty thought ruefully.
The woman paused, then shrugged and pointed to a narrow hallway. “Right there. But it’s for motel guests only.”
“Fine,” Letty said, hurrying toward the bathroom door.
* * *
She took her time in the bathroom, first washing Maya’s tearstained face and hands, finger-combing the damp curls, then doing her best to try to make herself look, as Mimi would have said, “respectable.”
Letty sat Maya on the closed toilet seat. She washed her own hands, then splashed water on her face and neck before gathering her straight brown hair into a ponytail. She fished lipstick from her purse, which was bulging with all the last-minute items she’d tossed in before fleeing the city.
She closed her eyes and tried to choke back the suffocating sense of panic she’d been seized with at the sight of that cop in the parking lot. Common sense told her she should back the Kia out of here and ride on down the road.
But.
That magazine article. There was something about this place that meant something to Tanya. Her sister was not particularly sentimental. She was not a saver of magazine articles. And yet, she had saved that article about this particular place. Why?
Breathe, Letty, she told herself. Inhale. Exhale.
When she opened her eyes again, the face that stared back from the bathroom mirror was pale and gaunt. Her hazel eyes were bloodshot, ringed with dark circles. She glanced down at the blue-and-white-striped T-shirt she’d grabbed from Tanya’s closet, after