The Silent Sister(43)

She was afraid to say the words Ann Johnson. Afraid the name would somehow give her away. She felt the jade pendant beneath her fingertips. “Jade,” she whispered, then tried to wet her lips with her dry tongue. “Jade,” she said again.

“Beautiful name.” Ingrid reached into a bag she carried and pulled out a bottle of water. “Here, baby,” she said, handing her the bottle. “And do you like chocolate chip or oatmeal?”

She didn’t know how to answer. She didn’t even understand the question.

“Cookies, sweetheart,” Ingrid said. “I try to bring them out here a few nights each week.”

She doubted she could eat a cookie, but knew she needed to try. “Oatmeal,” she said, and took the plastic-wrapped cookie Ingrid offered her.

“Is this your first night in O.B.?” Ingrid asked.

She nodded.

“And how old are you, honey?”

“Eighteen.”

Ingrid hesitated, then picked up her lantern again and got to her feet and Lisa—Jade—had to stop herself from grabbing the woman’s leg and begging, Please help me!, but the last thing she needed was a stranger in her life. A stranger who, in better light, might recognize her face. Steven’s murder had made national news. It had even been written up in People magazine. Her father had been foolish to think that changing her hair color would be enough to protect her.

“Stay safe, honey,” Ingrid said as she moved away from her, and Jade fought back a sob as she watched the light move on down the beach.

* * *

In the morning, she hobbled stiffly to a small coffee shop, where she used the bathroom. Her reflection in the mirror was a shock, not only because of the brown, unwashed hair but also the dark circles below her eyes and the tight, sickly white skin stretched across her cheekbones.

In the café, she drank a carton of juice and ate half a bite of Ingrid’s oatmeal cookie before her stomach let her know it was a mistake. She was so exhausted after a sleepless night that the people milling around her in the café seemed like figures in a dream. At a table by the window, she spotted a man reading The New York Times, and wondered if there was a story about her in the paper. The Times had covered the murder, of course. Would it also cover her suicide? The man glanced in her direction, and she let a few strands of her hair fall over her cheek like a veil.

* * *

Back in the motel, the same man as the night before sat on the stool behind the counter and he said he’d have a room ready for her by noon. She cried, she was so relieved. One-twenty a week, he told her. She had no idea if that was a good price for this dumpy old place or not. She’d never been on her own before. She’d traveled more than most kids her age. All the concerts. All the festivals. But some adult—her parents or Steven or Caterina—had always taken care of everything and all she’d needed to do was show up and play her twenty-thousand-dollar violin. She knew now, as she waited for her room on a hard plastic chair in the lobby, with its grimy floor and stained walls, that she’d been spoiled.

Sitting there, she clamped her suitcase between her knees, knowing she was perilously close to drifting off to sleep. At noon, the man gave her a key and she walked outside, up the stairs and down a long exterior walkway to a room that was no bigger than the prison cell she belonged in. Although it was daylight and the sun shone through the filmy glass of the window, two roaches marched across the floor in full view. Jade barely took note of them. All she saw was a bed that looked like it had clean sheets beneath a thin green blanket. She locked the door, pulled the curtains closed, and fell onto the bed to sleep away this horrible new reality that had become her life.

* * *

She didn’t fully wake up until noon the following day. She’d gotten up a few times, awakened by laughter or shouting or, on one frightening occasion, pounding on her door, but other than that and a couple of breaks to use the filthy toilet in the bathroom, she slept. When she opened her drapes that second day, a man was peering straight into her room, his craggy face pressed against her grimy window. She screamed and whipped the drapes closed again. She didn’t dare go out there. The night she spent on the beach seemed like ages ago. Like someone else’s life. She’d been very lucky she’d made it through that night safely and had lost none of her precious cash.

Sitting on the bed in the dim light, she nibbled the remaining third of that woman Ingrid’s cookie, wondering how she would get more food, even though she still had no appetite. But she needed to eat to survive. She felt so weak and trembly, she wasn’t sure she could make it down the motel steps to the street. I could die in this room, she thought. But she couldn’t go outside with that creepy man out there. She crawled under the covers again. When she closed her eyes, all she could see was the image of her mother rocking Riley to sleep in her arms. Riley had on her pink-footed pajamas and Jade imagined the scent of baby shampoo and her mother’s hand lotion. If only she could erase the past few months and be back with her family! She fell asleep, longing to touch them.

The next morning, she awakened to a knock on the door. She stared at the door from the bed. The sun peeked into the room through the gap between the door and the door frame. It was the only way to know day from night in the room. The knocking came again.

“Jade?” a woman’s voice asked. “It’s Ingrid, honey. Please open the door.”

Jade hesitated a moment, sitting up in the bed, thinking, It’s a trap. Don’t open it. Don’t open it. But her need for kindness, for a grown-up to take over her life and put it in some kind of order, was too strong and she slowly moved the covers aside.