The Discarded Heiress Returns novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: Room Fourteen

Tallulah learns to clean rooms and reads the motel's books, the bank notice proves Augusta never paid the loan, and Dorrie calls to say Augusta will give her Tallulah's name on stage.

I took the photograph downstairs at one in the morning.

The kitchen light was on.

Dale was at the table in his undershirt with a shoebox of envelopes and a calculator.

He put his hand flat over the papers when he saw me.

"Can't sleep either?" he said.

I laid the picture down next to the calculator.

He put his reading glasses on.

He looked at it for a long time.

"That's the stop on Butler Avenue," he said. "That's her raincoat. She wore it till the sleeves hit her elbows."

"Look at the date."

He looked.

"She was twelve," he said slowly.

"So was I. That's the year I broke my wrist."

I turned my left arm over so he could see the scar.

Dale took the glasses off.

"Somebody stood across the road from my little girl with a camera," he said.

"Somebody paid them to."

He didn't ask who.

He put the photograph in his shirt pocket, behind the cord of his glasses, and buttoned it.

"Go to bed, Tallulah," he said. "I'll sit up."

I went.

I heard him at the table until the birds started.

Nana woke me at seven by opening the blinds.

"Rooms," she said. "You want to eat here, you strip beds here."

"I've never stripped a bed."

"Then today's your lucky day."

The Lantern's two housekeepers took one look at my silk blouse and found me a T-shirt.

It was yellow and said LANTERN MOTEL, TYBEE ISLAND, EST. 1958.

The lantern on the front was missing its flame.

Room fourteen took me an hour and ten minutes.

I put the fitted sheet on sideways.

I put the toilet paper on backwards, and the older housekeeper fixed it without a word.

Nana came to the door with a glass of sweet tea and watched me fight a pillowcase.

"They had people for this on Monterey Square," she said.

"Yes, ma'am."

"Did you know their names?"

"Every one."

She handed me the tea.

"Well, that's something," she said. "Now do the shower."

At eleven a mail truck pulled into the gravel.

The carrier made Dale sign for a long white envelope.

Dale read it standing on the porch.

Then he sat down on the top step.

I took it out of his hand.

NOTICE OF SALE UNDER POWER. The bank would auction the Lantern on the courthouse steps on the first Tuesday in June.

The balance due was one hundred and eighty thousand dollars, plus fees.

"She told Dorrie she'd pay it," I said.

"Dorrie told me the same."

"When?"

"Last week. She was so proud. She said the loan was taken care of." His voice went thin. "I believed her because I wanted to."

"Nobody's paid it."

"No, honey. Nobody's paid a dime."

Dorrie was in a car to Savannah, and the bank still had the deed.

My mother had bought a daughter on credit.

That afternoon I asked Dale for the books.

He brought me the shoebox.

"This is the books?"

"That's most of them. Some are in the truck."

I spread the receipts across the kitchen table and sorted them by month.

Nana dealt herself a game of solitaire at the other end and cheated at it.

It took me two hours to find the problem.

"Fourteen rooms," I said. "Eleven empty tonight. Your rate's forty-nine dollars and you're on no website at all."

"We've got a sign."

"Your sign says THE LAN ER MO EL."

Nana laughed so hard she had to put her cards down.

Dale pulled his cap off and rubbed his head.

"The rooms are clean," I said. "The beach is right there. People just don't know you exist."

"And you'd know how to fix that."

"I grew up in a hotel family. I know how people find a hotel."

He looked at me over his glasses.

I waited for him to say I was seventeen.

"Then I guess you're the manager," he said. "Pay's terrible."

"I'll take it."

At six Nana turned on the little TV over the stove for the news.

My mother's face filled the screen.

She was on the steps of The Ballantyne in a cream suit, holding Dorrie's hand.

Dorrie's hair had been blown straight. Somebody had taken her glasses.

"Saturday night at our Spring Ball," my mother told the reporter, "Savannah will finally meet our daughter."

She squeezed Dorrie's hand.

Dorrie looked at the camera.

Nana switched it off.

"That woman smiles with her bottom teeth," she said.

Nobody ate much.

The landline in the office rang at ten forty that night.

Dale was in the shower, so I picked it up.

"Lantern Motel."

Nobody answered.

I could hear breathing, and a door somewhere, and water running to cover a voice.

"Tallulah?"

It was barely a whisper.

"Dorrie. Are you okay?"

"I'm in her bathroom with the faucet on. I've got two minutes."

"What's wrong?"

"The ball on Saturday. I saw the program."

Her breath shook.

"She's going to give me your name," Dorrie whispered. "On stage."

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