Emily St. John Mandel - The Lola Quartet

Paul stared at the screen and even though Daniel was far from the underworld, he'd seen enough movies to understand. Paul couldn't let this slide because the girl was a witness. Daniel assumed that if word got out that it was possible to get away with stealing a hundred twenty-one thousand dollars, then Paul was finished.

"Of course not," Paul said. He turned to Daniel, as he had a half-dozen times in the past half-hour; but now everything was different, because now someone was watching them. "I could hold you responsible," he said. Daniel hoped this was for the benefit of the girl.

"I told you I had nothing to do with this. I haven't spoken a word to her since the baby was born."

" Where would she have gone?"

"I have no idea," Daniel said.

"I might be willing to believe you," Paul said, "but first you have to tell me who her friends are." The girl was chewing gum, looking from one to the other.

"She doesn't really have—"

"Who did she spend time with before she came here?" Paul asked.

Daniel spent the rest of his life laden with guilt, but at that moment telling him seemed the only way out of that house. He gave him the names of the rest of the Lola Quartet. "But look, the only place she would go is Florida," he said. This bit of misdirection seemed the last thing he could do for her. In an hour he would call her and speak into her voice mail, he would tell her how sorry he was and how stupid she'd been and beg her to go anywhere but Florida. In two hours she would stand at a counter in a small town in Colorado and change her bus ticket to South Carolina. "She's never in her life been anywhere else."

Ten years later in the city of Sebastian Gavin read the account of Paul's death and sat still for some time looking at nothing before he closed his laptop and continued on with his day. Later that evening he showered and shaved, put on his best shirt and drove to the address on the torn corner of newspaper. Driving was unpleasant and nerve-wracking with his bad arm, he didn't like having only one hand on the steering wheel, but he was tired of taxis. The address Deval had given him was another motel, even farther out than the Draker, a run-down place just within Sebastian city limits. It was late already, ten thirty p.m., and lights were on in no more than five or six motel-room windows. He parked his car and made his way toward the building.

A girl was jumping rope by the stairs that led up to the second story. He couldn't see her face, a blur of long dark hair in the shadows, but something in her movement arrested him. He sat down on a step and waited until she stopped.

"Hello," he said. The girl from the photograph stared back at him. Eilo's thin lips and straight dark hair, a dusting of freckles on her nose. Traces of Japan in the shape of her eyes although her eyes were the color of Anna's, bright blue. "Is your mom around?"

"No," she said. There was something deerlike about her. She was winding the skipping rope around her hand, watching him, and her bearing suggested that she might bolt at any moment.

"Where's your dad?"

"I don't have a dad," the girl said. "He died before I was born."

" Really," Gavin said. "Before you were born?" He wanted nothing more than to stay in this moment forever, sitting here on this step with his daughter before him. Trying to imagine all the years he'd missed, what she'd looked like at nine, at seven, at two.

"My mom said it was a car accident."

"A car accident," Gavin said. "I'm sorry to hear that."

She shrugged. "It's okay," she said. "I didn't know him."

"Where's your mom?"

"She's at night school," the girl said.

"What time does she get home?"

"Late. Maybe eleven."

The desolation of this small motel. The dirty stucco, the paint coming off the doors in patches and strips. She dropped the wound-up skipping rope at her feet, raised her arms and did a slow back handstand off the cement walkway onto the grass, walked on her hands for a few steps, and pivoted to face him once she was upright. He applauded.

"I've been practicing," she said. He was watching her with tears in his eyes. A memory of Eilo doing backflips in a circle around the yard when they were little. A firefly sparked in the nearby air and she crouched down to look at it.

"I'm not sure what your name is," he said.

"Chloe." The firefly blinked out. She stood.

" Chloe Montgomery?"

"How did you know?"

"I know your mom," he said.

"But how did you know she was my mom?"

"You look like her."

"No, I don't," Chloe said.

"You have the same color eyes," he said.

"What happened to your arm?"

"Just a silly accident," he said. "It's getting better."

"How do you know her?"

"Your mom? We went to school together."

"How old were you?" Chloe asked.

" Older than you," Gavin said. "I guess I was fifteen when I first met her. She was fourteen."

"Were you her boyfriend?"

"Yes."

"Oh," she said. She was studying him closely.

"Why are you here at the motel?"

"I don't know," she said. A flicker of doubt crossed her face. "My mom said it was a vacation."

"A vacation?"

"She said sometimes people stay in motels for a while and that's what a vacation is."

"Oh," Gavin said. "You know, she's right, actually. That's exactly what people do on vacation."

"We keep going from motel to motel," Chloe said.

"Chloe, I have to talk to your mom."

"She gets home late," Chloe said. "I make my own dinner."

"What do you make?"

"Macaroni and cheese. 'Bye," she said abruptly, and went to the

door of a motel room halfway down the row. She fumbled in her pocket for a key, unlocked the door and closed it behind her, and a light flicked on behind the curtain. He stayed on the steps for a long time, waiting, listening to crickets and muffled television noises, watching cars pass on the street. Two cars pulled up to the motel in the interval, people coming home with bags of groceries. This was a motel, he realized, where people stayed for some time, a place for people who didn't have houses or apartments anymore.

A third car pulled in, a small battered Toyota. The driver parked in front of the room that Chloe had disappeared into. It took him a moment to recognize Anna, hazy in the blue-white light. She had cut her hair short and dyed it. But she was wearing a sleeveless shirt that night and when she got out of the car he saw the bass-clef tattoo. She was less than thirty feet away.

"Anna," he said. She started and took a step backward, came up hard against the door of the car. He raised his hands.

"It's me," he said, "it's Gavin. Gavin Sasaki."

"Gavin. Christ." He remembered her smoking when they were teenagers, and understood from her voice that she'd never stopped. "How did you find me?"

" Deval gave me your address. I just wanted to talk to you. It's been years." He stood up slowly from the step. He didn't want to frighten her.

She looked at him for a moment, walked around the car to retrieve a bag of groceries from the passenger seat. She unlocked the door to the motel room, fumbling with her keys. "Why don't you come in," she said.

An n a h a d a job as a file clerk, but she was studying to be a paralegal. She was twenty-six and looked older, pale when she turned on the dim light over the stove in the kitchenette. She was blond but he saw the dark roots of her natural hair. She lived with her daughter in a single motel room. Chloe was nowhere to be seen, but Anna raised a finger to her lips and pointed at a squared-off corner of folding screens, and Gavin understood this to be Chloe's room. There were two mismatched stools at the kitchenette counter, no table. The room had two beds; he could see the flattened-down space of carpet where Chloe's bed had been, before it had been pushed into the corner and hidden from view. Anna moved efficiently in the tiny kitchenette, putting groceries away. She took two bottles of beer from the fridge, popped both, and passed him one. He held the bottle briefly to his forehead.