The Sun Down Motel(28)

“I had to,” I said. “You’re staying at the motel where I work. At night. You stay off the books. And you had a gun on your bedside table.”

“I keep that for protection.” He opened his free hand. “Some good it did. I didn’t even grab it when I left the room. I don’t have it right now.” He glanced at me. “I’ve been gone a long time. You don’t know what it’s like to have unresolved shit in your past, shit that weighs you down and draws you back to a certain place.”

Oh, he was wrong. So wrong.

“I do,” he continued. “I guess you know what happened to me. Some people can get past something like that, eventually move on. I never could. I’ve been an open wound all these years. Drugs, alcohol—nothing helped. So I thought I’d come back, see this place as a grown man. Face my past. I checked into the Sun Down for one night—one night. And do you know what happened?”

“What?”

“I slept.” He gave me half a smile, and for a second I could see the high school kid I’d seen in the newspaper stories, the kid who had been good-looking and decent and ready to take life on. “I mean, I really slept. It’s been years since that happened. I’m a night person. I’ve had insomnia for so long I don’t even remember when it started. And I checked into the Sun Down and slept for eleven straight hours. Just like that.” He snapped his fingers, the sound loud in the truck.

“In Fell, though?” I asked. “The place where it all happened? It’s the only place you can sleep?”

“I can’t explain it, either.” He looked out the window. “Eli is buried here. My mother is buried here. I sure as hell never made a home anywhere else. Maybe this fucked-up place is as close to home as I’m ever going to get.”

I was quiet, thinking about Heather saying, Some of us like the dark. It’s what we know.

“So I stayed,” Nick said. “I paid Chris a stack of money, and he left me alone once he saw I wasn’t dealing or doing any other shit. Just sleeping. Every time I lie down in that place, day or night, I fall asleep. You want to know what I’ve been doing for most of the past month? Catching up on a decade’s worth of sleep.”

“And when you woke up one night, the woman was on your bed.”

“She was,” Nick agreed. “And after that, I fell asleep again. It’s a weird thing to do, but I did. That’s what that place does to me, and I’ll take it. I don’t care about sounds or smells or strange women. I’m going back to the Sun Down tonight, because it’s the only place I’ve found in the world where I can sleep.”

I bit my lip. In the upside-down night world, it made a crazy kind of sense. “I’m not leaving, either,” I said. “I do have shit from my past that brings me here, as it happens. My aunt disappeared from the Sun Down in 1982, and no one ever found her body. I want to know what happened to her. That’s why I’m there.”

It was a testament to the strangeness of the night that Nick didn’t seem fazed. “Was she working there when she disappeared? Like you?”

“Yes. I came to Fell to find out what happened to her, because it looks like no one else ever bothered to. And they had this job available at the motel. So I took it.”

He nodded, like that wasn’t weird. “Was that her? In the dress?”

I shook my head. I was ninety-nine percent sure, but it had happened so fast. “I don’t think so. The clothes were all wrong, and her hair was the wrong color and style. I don’t think that was Viv.”

“I saw the dress when she was in my room,” Nick said. “It’s like a 1970s thing. At least, that’s what it looks like to me. It makes her too old to be your aunt.” A muscle in his jaw twitched. “But she’s someone. That much I know for sure. She’s someone.”

I stared ahead of me out the windshield at the ugly parking lot. I had seen things tonight that everyone I knew would say were impossible. But in the dark cab of this truck, they were real. Not only real, but understandable. Possibly even solvable. My eyes burned and my chest was tight. I felt like the night wouldn’t be long enough, that I wouldn’t have enough hours. That I certainly wouldn’t sleep. I felt like I’d never be tired again.

She’s someone.

“We can start with the dress,” I said. “We can find out what era dresses like that are from. We can look at the local newspaper archives. She died, we know that much. Right? There aren’t ghosts of living people.” I glanced at him.

Nick was watching me. He took a sip of coffee and shrugged. “I have no idea, but my guess is no.”

“So she died in the seventies, maybe. At the motel. That would be in the news. If she was local, there might be family still here. We could talk to them.” I glanced at him again. “I could talk to them if you don’t want to. The boy, too—he must have died at the motel. I didn’t see what he was wearing, but if a kid died at the Sun Down, it must have been in the news.”

“I thought you wanted to look for your aunt.” Nick’s voice was almost gentle.

Acid burned down my throat. “I do,” I said. “That’s what this is. I’m looking for her. Because I think . . .” I took a breath. “I think that whatever got the woman and the boy could have gotten Viv that night back in 1982. Which means she could be there with them.” I leaned back against the passenger seat. My eyes were still burning, but they were dry. “I might see her next,” I said. There was no way around it, but it was hard to contemplate: seeing the face from the newspaper clippings, those pretty eyes and that wide smile, coming out of one of the doors at the Sun Down. Hearing Viv’s steps like I’d heard the woman’s. Seeing her sitting on the end of a bed.