one room would not be overheard in the next.
On each door a shiny metal numeral was held in place by a pair of tiny nails. In most of the windows, the drapes were drawn. Each window was flanked by a pair of green shutters. At each door, a mat of plain rubber waited for travelers to wipe their feet before entering.
Mrs. Sloat took a ring of keys from her pocket. “Leo’ll be getting you your own set. Just the rooms, mind you—no reason for you to have any of the others.”
She slipped a key into the lock and the door swung open. Inside, the room was dim and smelled of mothballs and ammonia. Mrs. Sloat stood aside to let Lucy enter.
“This is very nice,” Lucy said.
Mrs. Sloat pushed open the drapes. There was a bed with a plain brown coverlet. The carpet was mossy-green, worn in places. A desk held only a gooseneck lamp. Next to the sink was a cake of soap wrapped in paper. Lucy wanted to break open the seal, peel away the paper, press it to her nose. She wanted to caress the satiny cake before running water over it, lathering and lathering for hours. She had not touched a fresh cake of soap since before they left Los Angeles. Her mother had favored a brand called Cadum, with French writing on the wrapper.
“It’s clean.” Mrs. Sloat ran a fingertip along the desk, held it up to show Lucy. “See? No dust. Not a speck. That’s what I’ll expect from you. If I receive a complaint, I’ll dock your pay for that day.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
A scratching sound outside the open door was followed by a thud that shook the building. A man in a wheelchair appeared in the door frame, his large hands gripping the wheels. His indisputably handsome face was angled with sharp edges and flat plains, and his eyes flashed with fury. Light brown hair, allowed to grow too long, fell across his brow. His feet were held in place by metal stirrups, and he wore only socks on his feet, no shoes. One of them had bunched around his ankle and seemed in danger of falling off, a detail utterly at odds with the tensed strength in his muscular, veined forearms.
“You the girl?” he said gruffly. His voice was raw and hoarse, as though he did not often use it. “Let me look at you.”
Beside her, Mrs. Sloat stiffened.
“Go ahead,” she said, shoving Lucy forward. “Let him see.”
Lucy took a step toward the door, which was too narrow for the wheelchair to pass through. Mrs. Sloat stood directly behind her with her strong fingers pushing at her spine.
“Well, you’re not much to look at, are you,” he said softly. “Ugly as original sin.”
Something inside Lucy twitched, a snag in the stoic façade behind which she had been determined to hide. She would endure whatever the Sloats dished out, but she would not allow this man to shame her.
“Yes, sir, I am ugly,” she said. “I guess that makes two of us.”
The smug expression froze on his face, his icy-gray eyes callous and cold.
He pressed his lips together and suddenly a gobbet of spit came hurtling from his mouth, landing on the front of Lucy’s dress.
“You can go to hell,” he said, backing up his wheelchair and turning with surprising agility. “You and every other Nip left on this planet.”
27
In the kitchen, Mrs. Sloat fetched a rag for Lucy, and watched silently as she wiped away Garvey’s spit.
“Throw it in there,” Mrs. Sloat said, pointing to a bucket in the corner of the kitchen. “You can start the wash this afternoon.”
Several hours later, Lucy was alone in the backyard with a huge basket of wet laundry and her first moment of solitude since arriving at the Mountainview Motel. As she hung the sheets and towels from the clothesline, she stole glances at the house, wondering if anyone inside was watching her work.
From the yard, she could see that the main house had suffered several shoddy additions. A screened porch was crowded with furniture and junk, spiderwebs and wasp nests lodged in every corner. To the right, a boxy extension jutted out toward the motel. An angled ramp clinging to the side suggested that the addition was where Garvey lived.
Was it her imagination, or did the curtains in Garvey’s window move slightly now and then? Lucy worked steadily, going through nearly all the clothespins from the cloth bag around her neck, but every time she bent