Мэри Эндрюс - The Newcomer

She looked away for a moment. “Yeah, that’s part of it.”

He took a half step away from her. “What are you so afraid of? I don’t think I’ve ever been around you when you were completely relaxed. I like you, Letty. And I know you like me. Can’t you turn off your brain and your self-control for an hour or so and relax and enjoy yourself?”

“You don’t understand,” Letty said quietly. “I wish I could be like you and do whatever I want, but I can’t. My life is too complicated right now.”

“Complicated how? You’re essentially a single mom now. I get that. Remember, I was raised by a single mom. But Ava never walled herself off the way you’re trying to do.”

“I can’t explain it.” She walked to the water’s edge and looked out at the sky. A jagged bolt of lightning flashed on the horizon, and the wind picked up, creating whitecaps on the water.

“I’ve got to get back to the motel,” she told him. “Maya’s afraid of lightning.”

“And what are you afraid of?” Joe stalked away.

First it was the wind. From nowhere, it seemed, it swept off the Gulf, nearly knocking her down in its intensity. The temperature seemed to plummet, and then the rain started when she was halfway back to the Murmuring Surf, slashing at her face and clothes. Letty broke into a run, head down, stumbling in the soft sand, and she didn’t slow until she saw the lights of the motel. Lightning crackled over the water as she made her way up from the beach path, drenched and shivering from the cold.

She found Isabelle sitting on the rusty chair in the breezeway in front of her room, with Maya wrapped in a blanket and curled up in a ball in her lap. The child was asleep, with Ellie hanging limply from one hand.

“What are you doing out here?” Letty asked, trying to catch her breath. “Maya is terrified of lightning.”

“When it started, she got really upset and was crying,” Isabelle said, smoothing the sleeping child’s hair. “But then I told her what Mom used to tell me when I was little, that the lightning was just angels laughing. So we came out here to watch it. And she reminded me that her mama was an angel, and she wanted to watch her laugh. She just now fell asleep.”

“That’s amazing,” Letty said. She held out her arms. “Here. I’ll take her.”

“I can do it,” Isabelle said. She looked Letty up and down. “I didn’t expect you back so soon. What happened to Joe?”

“How did you know we were…”

“He texted me to say you guys were going out for a drink, and could I hang out with Maya for a while. Must have been a short drink.”

“It didn’t really work out,” Letty said. “And then it started to rain. I’m gonna go inside and get dried off. Can you tuck her in for me?”

By the time she came out of the bathroom in dry pajamas, Isabelle was sitting in the room’s only chair, reading her paperback, and Maya was softly snoring from her side of the bed.

Letty tried to hand the teenager a wad of cash, but Isabelle shook her off.

“No way. Maya and I had fun.”

“But you gave up a Friday night to stay with her,” Letty protested.

“I didn’t have anything else going on. It’s cool.” Isabelle went over to the bed and dropped a kiss on the top of the little girl’s head. “Night night, Maya Papaya.” She picked up her book and went out the door.

The rain drummed against the breezeway’s metal roof outside and the wind rattled the unit’s jalousie windows. For the first time since she’d arrived in Florida, Letty was cold. She burrowed under the covers and tried not to think about her ill-fated stroll with Joe DeCurtis.

But the genie was out of the bottle. How long had it been since she’d been kissed like that? When she closed her eyes she could still feel the delicious, unsettling sensation of his lips and his hands.

And she could still feel the sting of his accusations. He couldn’t know how close she’d come to completely letting go.

“Letty, Letty.” Maya pressed her face against hers and used her thumb to pry open one of her aunt’s eyes. Letty opened the other one. The room was bathed in a murky gray light. It was still raining, and according to the clock radio on her nightstand, it was only seven o’clock.

“Go back to sleep, baby,” she said, yawning and rolling onto her side. “It’s Saturday. Letty’s day off.”

“Where’s Ellie?” Maya asked. “I want my Ellie.”

Oh Lord, Letty thought. She sat up and looked around the bed. No sign of Maya’s beloved companion. She lifted the covers.

“Look under the bed,” she told Maya. “Maybe Ellie’s hiding under there.”

The child giggled and crawled under the bed. “She’s not here.”

“Check the bathroom. Maybe she needed to go pee-pee.”

Maya wandered away. “Ellie,” she called. “C’mere, Ellie.”

A moment later Maya was standing by the side of the bed wailing. “Ellie’s not there! I want my Ellie.”

“We’ll find her,” Letty said grimly.

Not finding Ellie was not an option. She could remember other incidents when the stuffed elephant had gone missing. There was the time Tanya’s new housekeeper had made the mistake of tossing it into the toy box and piling other toys on top, which had resulted in an epic meltdown from Maya, and the unsympathetic housekeeper’s subsequent sacking. Once, shortly after Evan and Tanya separated and Evan had Maya for her first visitation, Tanya had “forgotten” to pack Ellie in the child’s overnight bag.

Maya’s resulting case of hysterics had led to a series of frantic late-night emergency calls to Tanya, who, Letty always suspected, had rather enjoyed the spectacle of seeing Evan, exhausted and unshaven, having cut his weekend plans short, drive back from the Hamptons to deposit Maya back on her doorstep at six o’clock the next morning.

Of course, he’d accused Tanya of deliberately leaving the toy behind in order to sabotage his visitation. Thereafter, Evan managed to track down the exact same elephant to keep at his place, but Maya would have nothing to do with Ellie 2.0.

For the next fifteen minutes Letty and Maya searched every corner of the small motel room, but to no avail.

“I want her,” Maya sobbed.

Letty tried to remember the last time she’d seen the love-worn stuffed elephant. And then it came to her—last night, when Maya was curled up with Isabelle outside on the breezeway. Maybe Maya had dropped the toy?

She opened the door, but a gust of wind pulled the knob from her grip and blew it all the way open. “Stay here,” Letty warned her niece, closing the door behind her. Outside, an inch-deep torrent of rain—overflow from a nearby stopped-up gutter—gushed past, carrying leaves and twigs, cigarette butts and a stray coral-colored hibiscus blossom. But there was no sign of the elephant.

Grimacing, she waded out the door and down the breezeway. At the end of the concrete walk she spotted a telltale lump of gray with a gold-studded red leatherette collar wedged up against a large plastic trash bin.

Rainwater streamed from the sodden stuffed animal.

Maya was standing right inside the doorway, sucking her thumb when Letty returned. “Look who I found!” Letty said.

“Gimme,” Maya said, stretching her arms out for her toy.

Letty shook her head. “Ellie stayed outside in the rain all night and she’s soaked. We need to let her dry out.”

“Bad Ellie,” Maya scolded, shaking her finger at the elephant. “You runned away from me.”

Letty fetched a towel and her hair dryer from the bathroom. She held the elephant over the small kitchen sink and did what she could to squeeze out some of the rainwater, then placed her on the towel and began to blot her dry. When she switched on the hair dryer and began running it over the toy, Maya stood right beside her, one hand patting the toy, as if to reassure herself that the elephant would not stray again.