Chapter 6: The Motel Room
The screen door of the motel room rattled in the evening wind as I pushed it open and slipped inside out of the gathering dusk. The room smelled of old carpet cleaner, bleach, and the cheap pine-scented air freshener hanging from the shower curtain rod.
Aunt Sarah was sitting at the small laminate table by the window, the amber light of a single bedside lamp cutting across her tired face. She had a cup of lukewarm instant coffee in front of her and an open ledger where she kept track of her delivery routes. When the door clicked shut, she didn't look up right away, but the pen in her hand stopped moving.
“Where have you been, Leo?” her voice was quiet, worn thin by hours of worry. She set the pen down and turned her head to look at me, her eyes sweeping over my dusty jacket and the scuffed toes of my sneakers. “I told you not to wander off down by the highway while I was running the afternoon shift at the laundry.”
I stood by the doorway, my fingers still clutching the small folded paper in my pocket. I hadn't planned on telling her everything—not about the gravel pit, not about the trailer behind the quarry, and certainly not about the conversation on the porch. But when I looked at the dark circles under her eyes, I knew the secret had already gotten too big to keep.
“I went to the gravel pit,” I said.
Aunt Sarah’s shoulders went rigid. She pushed her chair back from the table with a sharp scraping sound against the linoleum floor and stood up, her face pale in the dim light.
“You went where?” she asked, her voice rising slightly before she caught herself and lowered it again, glancing toward the thin wall that separated our room from the neighbors. “Leo, what on earth possessed you to go down there? Those men—they aren't local folks, they don't—”
“I talked to him, Aunt Sarah,” I interrupted, stepping further into the room and letting the canvas jacket slide off my shoulders onto the small armchair by the door. “I talked to Jax.”
The silence that filled the motel room was heavier than the afternoon heat at the quarry. Aunt Sarah froze, her hands resting flat on the edge of the laminate table, her knuckles white. For a moment, she looked like she wanted to yell, like she wanted to pack our bags right then and there and throw them into the trunk of the old sedan. But the anger didn't come. Instead, a strange, fragile expression crossed her face—something that looked remarkably like the look Jax had worn when he talked about the past.
“Did he hurt you?” she whispered, her voice trembling just a little.
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “He gave me a soda. And he told me why he left.”
Aunt Sarah let out a long, shaky breath, closing her eyes as she pressed the heels of her hands against her forehead. She walked over to the edge of the twin bed and sat down heavily, the springs groaning beneath her weight. She looked smaller now than she did behind the wheel of the car or standing at the laundry counter—just a woman who had carried a very heavy secret across state lines for eight long years.
“He always was a stubborn fool,” she murmured, a faint, sad smile touching her lips as she looked up at me. She patted the edge of the mattress next to her. “Come here, Leo.”
I walked over and sat down beside her, the rough fabric of my jeans brushing against the worn floral bedspread.
“What did he say?” she asked softly.
“He said he knew,” I answered, pulling the small folded paper from my pocket and placing it flat on her palm. “And he said he didn't think he was good enough to stay.”
Aunt Sarah looked down at the paper—the same registry slip Mrs. Gable had handed me earlier that day—and her fingers closed around it slowly, protectively. She reached out with her other hand and smoothed down my messy hair, her palm warm against my scalp.
“Well,” she said, her voice steadying as she looked toward the dark window where the neon sign of the motel flickered red against the night sky. “It looks like neither one of you is very good at staying away when you've made up your mind.”
“Can we go back to the diner tomorrow?” I asked.
May you like
Aunt Sarah looked down at me, her eyes searching my face just like Jax’s had a few hours before. Then, slowly, a faint nod of agreement broke the tension in the room.
“One more time,” she said quietly. “And then we talk about what comes next.”
