knowing if anyone could help her, it would be her parents.
Sure, her sister was living back at home, and bringing a child into the house wasn’t going to do a lot to help Emily’s recovery. The divorce Emily had gone through had been wrenching. Marion couldn’t imagine what it must have felt like when her sister found out her husband, who never wanted to have children, was having an affair with someone who was now pregnant. Of course, that had been over a year ago. The baby was born by now.
Marion knew her sister well. She knew Emily might not say anything, but she would feel humiliated, and think of herself as a freshly minted spinster too old to have children. It wasn’t true, but that’s the way Emily’s mind worked. Poetic and tragic.
But Marion couldn’t worry about her sister’s feelings anymore. She’d been living with Emily’s drama since the day she was born. It was time to stop getting pulled into it. The reason was stretched out in the seat next to her, not asleep at that moment, but content. Iris.
They arrived in her hometown that evening, then grabbed a taxi at the station. The cabbie took a second look at her and Iris, but said nothing.
Iris seemed very interested in the world outside the taxi as they drove through the streets. The smile on the child’s face, the smile that was almost always there, seemed a fraction broader. Marion took this as a good sign.
As they turned onto the street where her parents lived, the anxiousness Marion had been feeling for so long began to subside. Soon she would be in the home she grew up in, eating her mother’s food, sleeping in the room that had been hers, safe in the cocoon of family. But as they neared the house, she realized something wasn’t right.
On the lawn in front of her house were dozens of flickering candles and bundles of flowers, and people, their heads bowed. The house itself, though, was dark.
“No, no. Keep driving,” she told him in French. “I must have the wrong street.”
The driver seemed relieved when she gave him the name of the next street over.
“Horrible,” he said as he glanced over at her childhood home. “Just horrible.”
She almost asked him what had happened. His words indicated he knew, but her own voice had left her. Someone had died in the house. There was no question about it.
On the next street over she got out, paid the cabbie, then watched him drive away.
Ten minutes later, at a pay phone several blocks away, she called for another taxi.
“Where to?” the driver asked once she and Iris were in the back seat.
She had thought about this while she’d waited for him to arrive. She was afraid to use her false ID, thinking it might create a trail someone could pick up on. And there was no way she could use her real ID. She needed to find someplace anonymous.
“Saint Laurent,” she said, naming the borough on the west side of Montreal. “Boulevard Marcel-Laurin.”
The cabbie eyed her in his rearview mirror. “Do you have a specific location?”
She hadn’t recalled the name of the motel, but knew basically where it was located. A sleazy place that she’d heard charged room rates by the hour. It worried her to take Iris there, but she at least knew they wouldn’t ask for an ID.
“I’ll tell you when we get there.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I need to know now.”
She took a quick breath. She was on the edge of breaking down, but she forced herself to keep it together. “It’s a motel, okay? I don’t remember the name.”
The driver hesitated. “Motel Monique?”
“Yes,” she said, realizing he was right. “That’s it.”
“Deposit,” he said.
“What?”
“I need a deposit first.”
“I’ll pay you when we get there,” she said.
“Maybe you don’t have the money.”
“I have the money.”
“Then pay me now. I’m not going to wait around while you say you’re going inside to get the cash from one of your … customers.”
Marion stared at the man’s eyes in the mirror, unable to believe what she was hearing.
“I’m not a…” She paused. “I’ve got a child with me! You think I’m a prostitute?”
“Wouldn’t be the first hooker to have a kid, would you? Twenty dollars right now or no ride.”
She stared at him for another second, then broke eye contact and pulled a twenty-dollar bill out of her purse. She dropped it in the front seat, purposely avoiding his outstretched hand.
“Can we go now?” she said.
The driver shook his head a couple of times, like he’d seen it before and knew he would see it again. He dropped the taxi into drive and pulled out onto the street.
She spotted the Motel Monique a half a block before they arrived. It was a big dingy box of a building with a faded sign out front lit by a couple of floodlights. But most important, the neon sign that had been tacked on at the bottom said
The first thing she did after the cabbie dropped her and Iris off in front of the motel was to walk over to a group of newspaper dispensers in front of the liquor store next door. There were no more copies of
It was right on front, the lead story.
GAS LEAK ENDS IN FAMILY TRAGEDY
She stared at it, wanting to read more. But she knew if she did, she’d break down right there on the sidewalk. So she forced herself to fold the paper and stick it into her travel case.
Iris started to whimper against her shoulder. Marion repositioned her arm around the girl’s back, then said, “It’s okay, sweetie. Everything’s okay. You can lie down in a minute. Would you like that?”
The tone of Marion’s voice carried an undercurrent of panic, but there was enough comfort to settle Iris. The whimpering ceased, and the little girl lay her head heavy against Marion’s shoulder. A few seconds later her breathing was deep and even. Asleep now, no need for a bed.
Marion walked back to the Motel Monique clutching the child to her with one hand while pulling her suitcase behind her in the other.
From the moment she entered the motel’s office, the clerk eyed her suspiciously. He was sitting behind a poorly laminated counter with the very classy addition of a Plexiglas wall that extended from the counter’s top all the way to the ceiling. There was a small circle cut into the see-through divider about a foot and a half above the counter, and another, half-moon shaped, where the plexi met the laminate. Like an old movie-house kiosk, only scummier. The plexi was scratched and worn, and at some point in the past several years it looked like someone had thrown liquid against the surface, and no one had gotten around to cleaning it yet. But it worked well with the rest of the office’s decor: old, barely functional, and uncared for.
“Help you?” the clerk said as Marion approached the window. He was only slightly better than the room itself. At least it looked like he’d taken a shower in the last forty-eight hours.
“I need a room,” she said.
His gaze flicked to Iris, then back at Marion. “For how long?”
“Just one night.”
“The whole night?”
“I just need a place to sleep. For me and my child.”
“That’s your kid?” he asked, again with the suspicious eyes.
“Just tell me how much.”
“There’s an EconoLodge not too far from here. You’ll be more comfortable there.”
