The Daughter They Abandoned Twice novel · Chapter 4 of 24
Chapter 4: The Sundown Motel
The Sundown Motel was still open.
Its sign had lost the S, so it said UNDOWN in yellow bulbs, and half of those were dead.
It was ten at night when Levi's truck rolled into the lot.
We had driven four hours across the panhandle without a single word, and my face still stung where his mother had hit it.
"This is it?" he said.
"This is it. Room nine was ours. Ten was hers."
He got out and stood looking at the door of room ten.
It was a different door now, painted brown, with a new number plate.
I watched his shoulders, and I did not go near him.
The office had a bell on the glass door that rang when we pushed it.
Behind the counter sat a thin old man in a cardigan, watching a game show with the sound off.
He had a mug that said WORLD'S OKAYEST GRANDPA.
"Room's forty-nine a night," he said without looking up. "Cash or card."
Levi laid his badge on the counter.
The old man looked at it, and then at him, and then at me.
He took a long breath.
"I wondered," he said, "if somebody would ever come."
I felt Levi go still beside me.
"Twenty years ago this July," Levi said. "A white van, rooms nine and ten. A woman, a man and a little girl with braids."
"There were two girls," the old man said. "Braids and a blonde one."
He looked at me, and his mouth went tight.
"That's you."
"Yes," I said.
"You were barefoot at breakfast and you ate all the sugar packets." He shook his head slowly. "I've got a granddaughter who's six."
Nobody said anything.
"What do you remember?" Levi said, and I could hear how hard he was holding it back.
"I remember a girl screaming in the middle of the night." The old man's voice cracked. "Two in the morning, out on the walkway. I came out in my slippers. A man in a green cap told me she was his daughter and she'd had a bad dream."
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