The Mystery of Hollow Places(59)

The front desk clerk has his back to me, rooting around under the desk, and hasn’t seen me yet. Betting he won’t give out a guest’s room number to just any uncombed teenager, I duck down a short hallway to my left, past the elevator and to the vending machine humming away at the end. Kicking off my boots and peeling off my coat, gloves, and hat, I stuff them and my bag into the corner beside the machine. With the last few coins in the bottom of my pocket I buy a Coke. I turn and survey my reflection in the tarnished gold doors, cloudy with handprints. I’m a static-haired, red-eyed mess, but it could work for me.

Shuffling out into the lobby in my socks, I call out, “Hi, um, excuse me?”

The clerk turns slowly. He looks exhausted. Probably worked the nightshift and won’t be relieved till nine or so. Hopefully he won’t give three craps about protocol this late in his shift.

“So, I locked myself out of my room?” I shrug and smile at him, channeling my inner Jessa. “I woke up and, like, came down to get a soda, but I forgot I lost my key card yesterday? And my dad’s not answering the door? I think he’s in the shower, maybe?”

“What room?” the clerk mutters, crossing to his computer.

“Umm . . . oh my god, I should totally know this. One forty? Or one fourteen? It’s under Joshua Scott. He’s my dad.”

His fingers skate across the keyboard. “Sorry, I don’t think that’s it.”

“Are you sure?”

More clicks of the keys, and a sigh. “No, it doesn’t look like it.” Now he’s peering over the monitor at me, perhaps trying to remember if he’s seen me check in.

Black panic coils up around me. What if, what if, what if . . .

“Or”—I suck in my breath—“could it be under my . . . other dad’s name? Miles Faye? He could’ve, like, booked the room for us.”

I wait for the clerk to wave me off, but he doesn’t. “I’ve got a Miles Faye in room two fifty-six.”

Oh thank god. I slap my forehead with my free hand. “I am such a flake. That’s totally it.”

“I’m guessing you’ll want a spare key?”

“That would be amazing,” I gush, collecting the key card from him after he feeds it through a little machine on the desk. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” I grin as brightly as possible and walk away, casually sipping my Coke.

Jessa would be proud, I think.

Back at the elevators I drain the soda—I could use the caffeine—and collect my things. I ride up to the narrow corridor of the second floor, where the wallpaper is the red-orange of a bright, bloody sunset. Just around the corner is room 256. A dull orange door like every door, except not. The key card is in my sweat-slick hand, but I’m afraid to use it.

I think it’s like this: as long as you don’t turn the last page in a book, you get to believe whatever you want to believe. You can have faith the good guys will win, the clearly identifiable bad guys will lose, and everyone will go home and eat Spicy Italians on flatbread on their cheerfully dumpy living room sofa. I’m not living in a sunshiny state of delusion. I know this is real life, not some story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle or Agatha Christie or Rex Stout. Whatever’s in room 256 will be in the room, whether I open the door or not.

But I am so f*cking scared to turn the page.

When the key card slot blips green, I ease the handle down, peering into the dark behind the door. A wall of stale heat and the pretentious sweet-spicy smell of Djarum Blacks break over me.

Carefully, I make my way across the cluttered floor, to the single bed where a long lump under the sheets is illuminated in the slice of hallway light, and steady my voice.

“It’s time to get up, Dad.”

While my father splashes water on himself in the bathroom, I poke the toe of my boot through the debris of empty beer cans and fast-food delivery cartons covering the carpet. There are a lot more cans than cartons, but at least he’s been eating. I’m reminded by my percolating stomach that I haven’t, and none of the half-full boxes of rice or feebly rewrapped burgers look farm fresh. I sniff one—which has recently pulled double duty as an ashtray—then carefully pat the wrapper back in place.

He emerges in a dingy T-shirt and his old pinch-kneed sweatpants. He blinks in the lamplight, and I wonder where his glasses are. His black hair is wild and sopping. Droplets trickle through the dark scruff shadowing his cheeks and chin. As he stands there unshaven in sports-themed loungewear, reeking of clove cigarettes, it could almost be funny, except for how thin and grayish-pale and crumpled Dad looks, and how he eyes the covers like he’d love nothing more than to slip back under them and sleep.

To stop this from happening, I sit stiffly on the bed, fisting my hands in the papery brown sheets. I’ve been waiting for this moment, and now I don’t know how to start.

Surprisingly, Dad does. “What are you doing here, Imogene.” It’s not even a question. More like a line in a script he has to read, instead of a topic of actual curiosity.

“What do you mean, what am I doing here? I followed you. The clues you left me.”

He stares at me, almost-black eyes blank.

I dig through my bag, dumped at the foot of the bed, and pull out the heart. “You left this for me, didn’t you? To tell me where you’d gone? To tell me where I could find you?”