Chapter 11: Route 9

I walked for an hour with the dog and ended up at a motel on Route 9.

It had twelve rooms, a vending machine and a sign that said NO VACANCY with the NO burned out.

I paid cash from Edie's envelope.

The man at the desk charged me an extra ten dollars for the dog and did not ask about the video.

Room six had a brown bedspread and a window facing the lot.

I sat on the bed with the napkin and the photographs and the certificate laid out on the bedspread in a row.

The dog turned in a circle on the carpet and lay down on my feet.

I looked at the first frame for a long time.

In it I was laughing, with a plastic veil on my head and my eyes shut.

I had not laughed like that in four years.

I had not known that until I saw it.

An hour later I heard a motorcycle idle outside and cut off.

I went to the window and lifted the corner of the curtain.

Cade had parked at the far end of the lot.

He walked to the step in front of my door and sat down on it with his back against the wood.

He didn't knock.

He took off his helmet and set it beside him, and he looked at the vending machine.

I let the curtain fall.

I sat on the bed and waited for him to knock.

He did not, and I waited a long time.

He had said he would wait fifty years on a couch, and I had thought it was a speech.

I opened the door.

He turned his head and looked up, and his face was gray with cold.

"You've been out here two hours," I said.

"Ten minutes less."

"Why didn't you knock?"

"You said you needed to be someone who chose it." He stood up slowly, one hand on the doorframe. "I figured you'd know where I was."

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