LITMIR.BIZ

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Kate exclaimed. “Anyway!” Then she walked over to Madison and touched her shoulder. “Hey, it’s okay. I know that must have been hard, having all that intense family time.”

      Smart of her to ignore the tirade, Carmen thought. “Yeah, that really sucks, Mad,” she added. She meant it, too. And she felt a surge of gratitude to her own parents for being there for her, emotionally, geographically, and financially.

      Madison brushed off Kate’s hand and stood up from the table. “I said I didn’t want to talk about it,” she said. “So drop it, all right? I don’t need your pity. In fact, I don’t need any of this.” She gestured wildly to the whole room and then stormed off down the hall.

      “Well,” Carmen said after a few moments. “That was awkward.” She glanced at Kate, who looked worried, and then over at Laurel.

      Laurel looked thrilled.

      

      Madison wanted answers. Not diversions or evasions. Not a lame “Aw, Sweetpea, I just wanted to see you,” or a “Well, I happened to be in the neighborhood.” No: She wanted real, honest answers about why Charlie had shown up now and exactly what he wanted from her.

      The momentary flush of love and gratitude she’d felt when she learned about the letters had dissolved and become tinged with suspicion. It was time to uncover the truth.

      The parking lot of the E-Z Inn was littered with fast-food wrappers and empty glass pint bottles still camouflaged in paper bags. (“Give me Rosie in a skirt,” her mother used to say to the clerk at the 7-Eleven; it meant Wild Irish Rose in a paper bag, which she could take to the park while she watched Madison and Sophie climb all over the jungle gym.) A man with tattoos on his neck, his hands, even on one cheek sat on a folding chair outside room 3, smoking. He asked Madison, as she stepped out of her gold Lexus, if she’d like to join him for a drink. Madison shuddered and hurried past, down the row of forlorn-looking doors toward the one that was marked OFFICE.

      The last time she’d been in this neighborhood was when she got off the Greyhound from Armpit Falls. She’d made it out of downtown L.A. in under an hour, though.On the bus she’d befriended a guy named Travis who was going to visit his sister at UCLA. When the sister picked him up, she offered Madison a ride. Madison took it and never looked back. A week later she’d found a job at a little salon, and her transformation began with some free highlights and a spray tan.

      A bell jangled on the lobby door as Madison entered. There was a man passed out on an avocado-green couch near a fake potted palm. Fluorescent lights flickered overhead. The room smelled like stale cigarettes and mildew.

      Madison walked over to the Plexiglas window that separated the owner of the motel from his guests. “Hello?” She tapped her knuckles against the greasy glass and wished she’d brought a bottle of hand sanitizer. Who knew what kind of infection you could get in a place like this?

      “Be right with you.” The owner’s back was to her, and Madison could see that he was playing online poker. The man on the couch turned over and snorted wetly in his sleep. Madison shuddered once again. Maybe this had been a bad idea.

      After a moment the owner turned around, and his expression turned from boredom to predatory interest the moment he saw Madison. “Well, hello and hello,” he said to her breasts. “Are you looking for a room?”

      Madison nodded curtly. “Yes, I—”

      The man smiled. “We don’t usually see your caliber of girl around here. You want the room for an hour or for the night? Money’s due up front, of course. Cash only.”

      Madison paled. “Excuse me?” she said. “Do you think I’m”—she looked both ways and angrily whispered—“a prostitute?”

      The man shrugged.

      “Sir,” Madison scoffed. “This is Stella McCartney,” she said, motioning to her dress.

      “Okay, not your line of work. No problem. So you want the room for the night, then.”

      “I’m not here to book a room,” Madison said with more than a hint of disgust.

      He held up his hands in surrender. “Hey, don’t act so offended. You know we’re all prostitutes in this life, baby. We just make our monies different.”

      “Says the philosopher of the fleabag motel,” Madison remarked acidly. “Thanks so much for your wisdom. But I’m looking for a Charles Wardell. I believe he’s staying here?” She glanced over her shoulder at the guy on the couch, who was now upright and leaning by the door.

      “Ready when you are, darlin’,” he said, leering. It was 11 a.m., and he was already (or still) drunk.

      “Oh my God.” Madison clutched her YSL bag closer to her body. “Ew. Can you just tell me where Charlie Wardell is staying?” she said to the owner.

      “Room nine,” he said. “I’m Earl, if you should need . . . anything.”

      Madison rolled her eyes. He was talking to her breasts again. “Thank you,” she said coldly.

      She turned on a heel and almost ran into the drunk. “Hey,” he said. “Aren’t you that girl on the billboard on Sunset?”

      But Madison was already pushing past him. She couldn’t get out of there fast enough. She passed the tattooed man again, who waved, and hurried toward the far end of the building.

      Her dad’s room was located between the fire escape and the Dumpsters. Madison knocked on the metal door and waited, feeling uncomfortable and out of place in her heels and short summer dress. She should have tried a little harder not to stand out. Too bad she’d thrown away the clothes she’d brought from Armpit Falls long ago; cheap denim and pleather shoes would have been just the ticket for today’s excursion.

      Sometimes she wondered what her life would have been like if she hadn’t run away from home when she was fifteen. Would she still be miserable and alone, a fish out of water? Or would she finally have accepted her hardscrabble existence? If she had, she’d be settled down with one of the guys from the paper mill by now, the mother of at least two little brats and the proud owner of six Ford pickup trucks, only one of which ran.

      She shook the thought from her mind and knocked again.

      “I’m coming,” Charlie yelled. “I told you I won’t have the money until—” The door flew open and he stopped speaking.

      “Oh! Mads, I thought you were Earl.”

      “No, not Earl. Nice place you picked out.” Madison looked past her father into the dim, tiny motel room. She could smell cigarettes and bleach. The TV was on in the corner but its picture was blurry. There were two beds, both of them neatly made. She supposed he’d developed that particular habit in prison.

      “Oh, where are my manners?” Charlie said and stepped aside. “You want to come in?”

      Did she want to? No, absolutely not. But did she need to? Yes. She told herself that she was just trying to find what a therapist would call “closure,” but she sensed there was something deeper involved. Something weaker.

      “Sure,” Madison said, and entered the room.

      Dirty yellow curtains covered the windows; only a sliver of light came in. The comforters were probably mustard-colored once, but they had faded to a dingy shade that looked like the room smelled. There was a small Formica table and two chairs next to the built-in wooden dresser. The door to the bathroom hung ajar, one of its hinges broken.

      “It’s temporary,” Charlie said, sounding apologetic.

      “Of course. The Standard must have been booked.” She tried hard to keep the revulsion she felt from being visible on her face. She examined one of the chairs

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