Мэри Эндрюс - The Newcomer

Maya nodded vigorously, sending her curls shaking. “I’m a good, big girl.”

Letty dropped a kiss on the top of her head. “You are the biggest, bestest girl in the world.”

By noon, she’d managed to clear debris from half the room, making dozens of trips back and forth to the dumpster, while Maya constructed a pillow fort from the least objectionable sheets and pillows Letty salvaged from the piles of rejected bed linens.

Tanya would have a fit, Letty thought, if she could see her daughter now. She’d become a major priss-ass after Maya’s birth, requiring that all visitors leave their shoes at the door, installing bottles of antibacterial soap in every room, refusing to let her daughter eat, touch, or play with anything that wasn’t certified organic.

But Tanya wasn’t here, Letty thought grimly. And germs were the least of their problems. She was hot and grimy, her legs and arms were aching, and her stomach was rumbling.

“Come on, ladybug,” Letty said, peeking down between the makeshift tent flaps at her niece. “Let’s get lunch.”

“Yay,” Maya said, scrambling to her feet. “Chicken nuggets!”

“Not,” Letty said firmly. “Salads. And fruit. And milk.”

“And cookies?”

“We’ll see.”

She was unlocking the Kia when Ava stepped out of the office and waved them down. “Y’all want some lunch?”

“Yes!” Maya answered.

“We were just going to go grab some groceries,” Letty said, walking over to the motel manager. “I meant to ask—where’s the nearest store?”

“There’s a Publix a couple of miles away, but in the meantime, why don’t you just let me give you lunch? Nothing fancy. Just some ham salad sandwiches, carrot sticks, and a few grapes.”

“And cookies?” Maya said, always hopeful.

Ava took the child’s hand in hers. “Why yes, I think I can probably rustle up a couple of cookies.”

Letty followed Ava into the office, through a door, and up a narrow flight of stairs.

“Here it is. Home sweet home,” Ava said, pushing through the door at the top of the stairs.

They were standing in a large, sunny room with polished pine floors, pale blue walls, and a bank of windows looking out over the sparkling waters of the ocean. The room looked comfortable and lived-in, with a squashy denim-slipcovered sofa facing a flat-screen television in the living area, and a pine farmhouse table surrounded by painted rattan chairs in the dining area.

“This is so nice,” Letty said, trying not to sound envious. Her old apartment back in New York would have fit in the space occupied by that dining table. She found herself blinking back tears at the thought of that apartment. In her haste to flee the city she’d only taken time to throw a few belongings into the car, her laptop, toiletries, whatever clothes would fit into her smallest carry-on suitcase. Everything else had been left behind. By now she was sure Evan would be pawing through all of her things; her clothes, her books, the few family pictures she’d kept over the years, seeking some clue to her whereabouts. The thought of his hands—the same hands that were responsible for Tanya’s death—on her things made her skin crawl.

“Does your son live here with you?” Letty asked, looking around at the room that was decorated with a decidedly feminine look.

“Joe? Not a chance. He’s got his own place down the beach a ways. No, it’s just me and my youngest, Isabelle. It’s nothing fancy, but it’s mine, and it’s mostly paid for. Come on in the kitchen. I bet you two are starving.”

The kitchen was smaller and more dated than the front rooms, with a bank of metal cabinets, a four-burner stove, a refrigerator, and a chrome-and-Formica dinette set pushed up against a picture window that looked out through the tops of towering palm trees onto the motel’s sandy parking lot.

Ava set three plates on the table and placed a child’s booster seat on one of the four yellow vinyl-covered chairs.

“I knew there was a good reason I didn’t take this to the Goodwill,” she said.

She slid a platter of sandwiches in the center of the table, then added a plate of carrot sticks and apple slices. “What can I give the baby to drink?”

“Juice box!” Maya said, pounding a fist on the tabletop.

“Milk would be fine,” Letty said. She’d barely placed a sandwich half on Maya’s plate before the little girl snatched it up and began gobbling it down. Letty had to force herself to chew slowly, savoring every bite.

“Mmm,” Maya said, chomping away at a carrot stick.

Ava beamed her approval as she added a second sandwich half to Maya’s plate. “That young’un was hungry. She fell on that food like a rat on a Cheeto.”

Letty choked back her laughter. “Sorry. We had a long drive down last night, and we did stop for dinner, but then she had an upset tummy, so I was afraid to let her eat too much after that. I’ve got to get us both back on a regular schedule, just as soon as we get settled into our room.”

“Where did y’all come from? I noticed the South Carolina tags on your car.”

“New Jersey,” Letty said, being deliberately vague. “But I bought the car secondhand, and I haven’t had time to get a new license plate.”

“I had an ex-sister-in-law from New Jersey, from around Newark,” Ava said, sipping from a glass of iced tea. “But she got run over by a garbage truck. I always thought that was poetic justice. Whereabouts are you from?”

“Hoboken,” Letty said. This was semi-true. She had lived in Hoboken, briefly, when she first moved to New York.

“How long have you been here at the Murmuring Surf?” she asked, eager to change the subject.

“Let’s see. Joe was just a baby. He was so little, and we were so poor, he slept in a dresser drawer until I could afford to buy a secondhand crib. He’s thirty-eight in July, so I guess it’s been that long.”

Letty stared out the window at the parking lot. A silver sedan pulled alongside her Kia and she felt herself tense. But then an older woman got out and began unloading a wheelchair from the trunk and she allowed herself to relax a little.

“Does Joe work here too? I mean, when he’s not being a police officer?” she asked.

“He’s actually a police detective, and he’d tell you he works here full-time, cop or no cop,” Ava said, rolling her eyes. “Both my kids work in the business. Joe does maintenance for me, and security, when we got problems, and Isabelle, she’s still in high school, when she’s not at school, she answers the phone and helps out some. I raised ’em like I was raised, to take responsibility early in life. What about you, Letty? What line of work are you in?”

Letty remembered the advice she’d gotten from Siobhan, the acting coach she’d briefly studied under during her first few months in New York. “Dig deep. Find your truth in every story, even the ones that are total bullshit. If you’re good enough, the audience will buy your truth, even when it’s a lie.”

She offered her audience of one a rueful smile. “I thought I was going to be a famous actress. And I did some of that, but mostly I’ve done whatever needed doing so that I could pay the rent. Sometimes it was waitressing. I did some office temp work, worked at a bagel shop and in a rental agency. Like that.”

“I thought I was going to be a badass rock ’n’ roll singer like Linda Ronstadt,” Ava confessed. “There was a time I could really belt out ‘You’re No Good.’” She shrugged. “Now that I think about it, that could have been the story of both my marriages. Anyway, the only singing I’ve done since high school has been for my supper.”

Letty glanced at the kitchen clock. “This has been such a nice treat for us, Ava, but I guess I’d better get moving again if I’m gonna get our room cleaned out enough to sleep in tonight.” She pushed away from the table and lifted Maya down from the chair.