“Your sign outside says Vacancy. Are you telling me you don’t have any rooms?” she said.
“Lady, you’re not likely to get a lot of sleep here.”
She pulled out several bills. “How much? Sixty dollars?”
A slight widening of his eyes told her sixty was more than the going rate, but she wanted to close the deal.
“Here,” she said. She put three twenties on the counter just her side of the half-moon opening. “That should do it, right?”
He looked at the money for a moment, then reached under the counter and came up with a key.
“Third floor, in the front,” he said. “You’ll hear the street, but most of the other guests prefer rooms in the back.”
She understood what he was trying to tell her. “Thank you,” she said.
She exchanged her money for the key.
“Elevator’s out the door and to the right.”
The clerk had been right about the room. She
Iris didn’t seem to mind any of it. She was fast asleep on the bed beside Marion. Something Marion wished she could also do. She had never felt this tired in her life.
But sleep wasn’t coming. Not yet.
It wasn’t that she was afraid she’d chosen the wrong place to stay. Far from it. The fact that the clerk hadn’t even had her fill out any kind of registration card had confirmed she’d made the right choice.
It was the story in the newspaper. She had read it three times, then dropped the pages on the floor.
Her parents were dead.
Her sister was dead.
The paper had said it looked like an accident, a leak in a gas line that had filled the home while her family slept. But Marion knew that couldn’t be possible. Her father had been meticulous in his care of the house. He’d had the entire gas system replaced only five years earlier. Far too soon for it to be experiencing any fatigue, and far too late for any installation mistakes to make themselves known. Besides, the new system had included leak detectors in each of the rooms where gas was used. The article had made no mention of detectors, and Marion found it impossible to think of a scenario where they all malfunctioned at once.
Her family was dead, and it was her fault. There was no other possible explanation. Whoever was looking for her had all the information they needed. For starters, they obviously had access to her UN file, and that would be more than enough. It would contain a history of anywhere she had lived, the names of places she had worked prior to the UN, her college transcripts, and the names and address of her family.
Maybe they thought she was in the house, too. At the very least, they’d thought the possibility she’d show in Montreal was high. Maybe they had tried getting her parents to tell them where she was. The article had made no mention of potential foul play, but could the police have been hiding that? Could her family have been tortured to see if they knew anything?
Beside her, Iris smacked her lips in her sleep, then turned toward Marion, nuzzling against the woman’s side before settling back down. Marion looked at the child, knowing she was the cause of what had happened but unable to blame the girl. It was Marion who had decided to safeguard her. She could have easily told her superiors in Cote d’Ivoire about the child. An appropriate place would have been found for Iris, and Marion’s family would still be alive.
But that hadn’t been the path she had chosen. She hadn’t trusted her own people to keep Iris out of harm.
A thought occurred to her. Maybe everything would have still been all right if she hadn’t started digging into similar cases. Maybe that was the trigger.
She closed her eyes. It was too much for her to think about, too much for her to consider. There was only one truth.
Her family was dead. And it was her fault.
The first light of morning woke her. She was still dressed, and propped up in the same position she had been in since she’d climbed into bed the previous evening.
Iris was asleep, lying comfortably on her back, her face slack and restful. The girl was amazing that way. She never seemed to have a problem sleeping. Maybe it was a kid thing, Marion thought. But she wasn’t sure. She had seen plenty of children at the orphanages she visited, even at Frau Roslyn’s, who woke up at least once or twice a night.
Marion eased herself off the bed so as not to disturb the child, and went into the bathroom. The shower looked questionable, but she knew she needed it, so she turned the water on as hot as she could stand it and got in. The stiffness she had felt upon waking began to loosen under the steaming water. Once she was done, she used one of the threadbare towels to dry off, then went back into the room.
She stopped after only a few feet and stared at the bed.
Iris was gone.
“Iris, where are you?”
She took a step to her right so she could look around one side of the bed, but the girl wasn’t there.
“Iris?”
She shot a quick look at the door, but the security chain was still in place from when she’d locked up the night before.
“Iris?”
There was the crinkle of paper. It came from the other side of the bed.
Marion rushed over, then breathed a sigh of relief.
Iris sat on the floor grinning as she picked up one of the pages of the discarded newspaper and flapped it up and down. She let out a giggle as she noticed Marion.
“Having fun?” Marion asked. She picked the child up, hugging her tight.
“Why don’t you stay on the bed while I get dressed, hmm?”
She set Iris down on the mattress, then retrieved the paper. She hesitated as she caught sight of the front page picture showing the house she’d grown up in. She almost put the paper back on the floor, but Iris was reaching out for it and making sounds like it was hers. Marion shook herself, then smiled and gave the newspaper to the girl.
Iris immediately began playing with it again. Marion suspected that most five-year-olds would pretend to read the paper or at least be interested in the pictures. But Iris wasn’t at that point yet. She seemed caught up in the sheer joy of the sound the paper made as she moved it and hit it and rubbed it against itself.
There was a small TV bolted to a shelf against the wall. Marion couldn’t locate a remote, so she walked over and turned it on, and was greeted with a scene of multiple naked bodies entwined in some kind of grotesque semblance of sex. The moans that came out of the speaker sounded more rehearsed than natural. Porno for the typical Motel Monique guest, she realized as she hastily changed the channel. She found a local morning news show, then got dressed as she watched, hoping to hear more about what had happened to her family.
The lead story of the six-thirty update concerned the kidnapping and murder of a prominent American official in New York City. There was even a police sketch of a possible suspect. Marion glanced up at it as she was pulling on her pants.
Then the story ended, and a new graphic appeared over the shoulder of the news anchor. It was a picture of her parents, and superimposed over them the word:
Tragedie
