“It’s all part of the plan,” Vanessa says. Her eyes are two hollow orbs, their darkness sucking Birdie in like a black hole. The gravitational pull she feels at Vanessa’s side is catastrophic. It’s the kind of force that could destroy worlds.
She goes on and Birdie listens, her captive audience.
“I know it doesn’t make sense to you,” Vanessa says. “But it will. All of this will have meaning when it’s over. But I think you know why this happened to you.”
Birdie shivers.
“Sin,” Vanessa says. “I know Tom isn’t fond of the word, but it’s as real as anything else. A living, breathing force that moves on us all. And it’s moved on you, Birdie. I can sense it. I feel it in your aura.”
Birdie knows what Vanessa’s implying. And she isn’t wrong. If she’d never gotten involved with Tom, if she’d never come here, there wouldn’t be a bullet lodged in her shoulder and a lifeless baby interred in her womb.
“How’s the baby?” Vanessa asks after a pause. She locks her eyes on Birdie’s, a human lie detector.
“Fine,” Birdie says and looks away. She grimaces as pain snakes it way from her wound down her spine and grabs hold of her core.
“Good,” Vanessa says, her tone holding a threat that she finally voices. “It would be a shame if something were to happen to the child. Especially for your sake.”
Vanessa reaches out a hand and takes Birdie’s in her own.
“I don’t want anything bad to happen to you,” Vanessa professes. Birdie has her doubts. If the shoe were on the other foot, she knows she would harbor a lot of ill will towards the woman. It’s hard to imagine that she doesn’t hold a grudge after so many years. After what her life has become. And part of that is Birdie’s doing. “I just want this baby to be safe,” Vanessa says. “And you, too, of course,” she adds as an afterthought with a vicious smile.
She stands and retreats out of the room, closing the door behind herself silently, her exit reminiscent of one of Dracula’s brides. Birdie is unsure for a moment if Vanessa was ever even really there. She stares at the ceiling, a prisoner in a fortress that is partially of her own making.
Birdie wonders what’s being said about the situation in the outside world. She wonders if this has made the news—if her name has come up. And if it has, she wonders who might have heard it. Who among the people that she used to know might have seen a broadcast and thought, Why, I used to know that girl. How did she get there?
She’s not sure she has an answer for them.
Mostly, though, she wonders if anyone will care at all.
IONE
Sand crunches under my slip-on flat as I exit my car. The asphalt is still hot to the touch, no doubt. A fine grit of dust rests on top, giving the parking lot of the Cactus Flower Motel the texture of sandpaper against the soles of my shoes.
The Cactus Flower is the last place in town still sporting a lit vacancy sign. The sun sets above the horizon, and the moon is ready to come out and provide some ghostly illumination to these badlands. Illumination that I’m sure will provide ample information for predators in the area. I’m still forty-five minutes from Kenton, according to my GPS. But this town, Guymon, is crawling with people who I am certain do not reside here. They’re reporters, mostly. Some law enforcement taking a break from what I’m sure they’re afraid is going to turn into a siege.
I walk across the lot, bag over my arm, ready to check in and reserve whatever room they might have left. A little annex, no bigger than my pantry, stands just beneath the breezeway like you might see in a motel in an old movie. For effect, a tumbleweed rolls across my path. I kick it and help it along.
“How can I help you?” a disembodied voice floats up out of a tiny speaker lodged in the plexiglass front of what functions as a front desk.
“A room, please,” I say, unsure of who I’m speaking with.
A short, fat woman with glasses attached to a nylon cord that drapes over her shoulders stands up behind the desk. Her face is flushed, and she holds up a pen.
“Got it!” she proclaims in a voice that would befit a witch in a children’s story.
I smile at her victory. Some days the small ones are all we get.
“So, a room, huh? You a journalist?” she asks and sits down behind the desk.
“Something like that,” I say.
“Got a lot of your kind out here since the other night,” she thumbs through some papers. “I’ve got one room left. Number thirteen, at the end over there,” she points past me to the far side of the parking lot. The last remaining room is also the furthest from her phantom toll booth. The perfect place for a solitary woman to be staying if she’s in the mood for an abduction.
“I’ll take it,” I smile at her. “How much?”
“Twenty-three for a night,” she says.
I reach into my bag and produce enough money for a few days. She gives me my change along with a retro-style keychain with a physical key attached with a ring. She smiles and goes back to a crossword that she’d been doing before her pen vanished just before I arrived. I step out from under the breezeway and walk over to my home away from home.
The key sticks in the door and I’m forced to rattle it loose before I enter the darkened room. I flip the switch on the wall and light explodes across the place from a too-bright and too-cool fluorescent fixture mounted to the ceiling.
If there were roaches, they’ve scattered by now.
A strand of the worn carpet snags on the toe of my shoe as I shuffle inside. After almost tripping, I sit my
