Ten Beach Road (47 page)

“It looks like North Dale Mabry has a ton of gas stations, restaurants, and hotels,” Maddie said after Kyra had read her the list. “I don’t know how hard it’ll be to find a room, but we can just keep heading north on it while we look. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

They didn’t. In fact, by the tenth hotel Nikki was tired of jumping out and asking if they had anything available plus her patience was wearing thin. “We’re in the middle of nowhere,” she complained to the current desk clerk. “How can you be out of rooms?”

“Hurricane’s coming. All the beaches are emptying.” He shrugged. “Can’t create a room I don’t have,” he said reasonably.

But Nicole was all out of reasonable. They were traveling on fumes and the lines at the gas pumps were even longer than the ones wrapped around the hotels. They’d consumed what little food Maddie had managed to pack for them hours ago. They needed a place to stay.

She strode out to the car and opened Kyra’s door. “Leave the camera,” Nikki said. “Come with me.”

She took Kyra by the arm and speed walked her into the tiny motel office. Kyra was out of breath by the time they got there, which Nikki decided could work in their favor. The more pathetic the better.

They marched up to the filthy Formica counter. The desk clerk’s eyes widened slightly when he saw Kyra’s stomach and noticed her labored breathing. He shook his head. “I’m real sorry,” he said. “I see you’ve got a problem. But I don’t have . . .”

“I know,” Nikki said. “Any room at the inn.” She let the biblical reference sink in a moment. “How about a stable? Or even the lobby area here?” She nodded to the small space with its chair and vinyl love seat. Even using the term “lobby” was a stretch. But it was dry and had places to sit. They were way beyond picky. “I know you don’t want to turn a pregnant girl out in this weather.” They all looked out the filthy front window to the artificial darkness and the heavy rain gushing out of it. The clerk glanced down at the computer screen.

“You must have something . . .” Nicole began.

“Well.” He punched a few keys. “I do have one room. It was booked, but they didn’t ask for a late arrival and they’re way overdue. They’ve probably gotten held up by the weather.”

Nicole was very careful not to move too quickly or to presume. She didn’t hug the man or Kyra or pump a triumphant fist in the air. “Gosh,” she said. “That would mean so much to us. Her mother’s out in the van. And her, um, sister, too.” And then because she couldn’t resist. “Today was supposed to be her baby shower.”

Kyra’s eyes went very wide but fortunately the clerk was too busy typing on the keyboard to notice. Nicole elbowed the girl. “Why don’t you go back to the car while I get the key and the room number?”

Kyra went.

It said a lot for how desperate they were to get out of the storm and into something resembling safety that no one complained about the room, although as far as Maddie could see it wouldn’t have even qualified as a Motel 6, because six dollars would have far exceeded what it was worth.

While the others stripped out of their wet clothes, Maddie gathered all of the change she’d scraped out of the van ashtray and carried it to the motel’s vending machines, where she used every bit of it to buy a dinner of three Hershey Bars, two packets of peanut butter crackers, and two cans of Coke. Back in the room, where the Weather Channel showed Charlene picking up speed and drawing inexorably closer, Maddie divvied up the meal, changed out of her still-damp clothes, and crawled into bed beside Kyra. Deirdre and Avery lay as far away from each other as they could get on the second bed. Nicole slumped on the rickety desk chair. All of them had their phones out. Maddie couldn’t reach Steve or Andrew. None of them could get a signal.

Maddie lay in an odd state of fear-fueled exhaustion in the tension-filled silence. The only one talking was the meteorologist and nothing he was saying was anything Maddie wanted to hear.

She lay awake worrying for a long time, wishing Steve and Andrew were here—or at least on their way—their life repaired, her family intact. She must have fallen asleep because she woke to a distant siren and Kyra’s hands on her arm. “The right front quadrant of the hurricane is close to shore but hasn’t hit land yet. Do you hear that siren and the beeping from the TV? There’s a tornado warning in the area. They’re telling everyone to go into a small interior room.”

Kyra’s voice caught slightly in fear, and Maddie sat up and pulled her into a hug. “I think I read once that you’re supposed to sit in the bathtub.” Kyra’s voice quivered. “Should we wake everybody up?”

Groggy, the five of them filed into the bathroom. Without asking, Maddie helped Kyra into the tub, propping her up against her pillow, handing her another one to put over her head just in case though she was careful not to add in case of what. Avery was selected to crawl in with her because she was the only one with any chance of fitting.

Deirdre sat on the toilet lid while Maddie and Nicole folded their bedspreads into piles on either end of the tub then sat on them with their backs against the wall. The tiny jalousie window on the exterior wall had a big X of tape across it, which was presumably meant to stop pieces of glass from spraying into the room, but didn’t prevent it from rattling. The sound on the TV was up as far as it would go, but Maddie could only pick out every fourth or fifth word; none of them were reassuring.

“What is it with us and bathrooms?” Nicole asked. “Have you noticed how many of them we’ve been stuck in together?”

Deirdre and Kyra managed smiles.

“I’ve noticed. I had a damned period because of it,” Maddie said, trying for another smile. “Nobody’s carrying, are they? No tampons or Kotex or anything?”

“Mother!” Kyra said and for a moment her embarrassment seemed to cancel out her fear. Which felt like a victory of sorts to Madeline.

Nikki laughed and some of the tension dissipated. But Avery seemed to be looking for something to think about beside the approaching storm. “Where did you go? And why did you come back?” she asked Nicole.

Outside the wind kicked up a notch. The little window rattled more insistently. The warning beep on the TV grew louder, which seemed unnecessary; could there possibly be anyone left who didn’t know a hurricane was coming?

“I’d been trying to find Malcolm for a long time.” Nicole considered them all. “He contacted me on the fourth. When you asked me to leave I went to where he was.”

Avery’s “aha” died mid-syllable.

“I was going to talk him into turning himself in. At least that was my plan.”

“And what actually happened?” Deirdre asked.

“I offered him my third of Bella Flora to turn himself in, so that you and everyone else would get at least some part of your money back,” Nicole said. She shifted uncomfortably on the floor. “He took the deed I’d had drawn up, but it was pretty clear he wasn’t going to turn himself in.” She hesitated; their gazes were locked on her like an infrared target. “He asked me to get some cash for him that he’d managed to put in our mother’s name and which apparently passed on to me.”

“So you weren’t really broke,” Avery said.

“That money could have saved me from ruin. If I’d known anything about it. But that was the first I’d heard of it,” Nikki replied. “And he only told me about it because he’d set it up so that I could access it when he couldn’t. And because he assumed I’d run to the bank for him, retrieve the money, and then hand it over.”

“And did you?’ Deirdre asked.

Nicole looked away, which wasn’t easy in such a small space crammed with so many people. “I’d always put him first no matter what he did. I guess it never occurred to him that could change. It hadn’t occurred to me until that moment.”

“But why?” Maddie asked, not understanding the sheer one-sidedness of it. “Why would he think that?”

“Because Malcolm and I were raised in what you’d call abject poverty. Our dad died working on the docks and our mother—she had maybe a seventh-grade education—worked two jobs to try to support Malcolm and me. One was nights at a bar. She worked days cleaning hotel rooms, although I don’t think she ever worked in a hotel as nice as this.”

Nicole tried to smile, but her face was stark in the bathroom’s harsh lighting. Her voice matched her face. It was odd how little you could really tell about people.

“Anyway,” Nikki continued when no one interrupted her. “I’m six years older than Malcolm and our mother was always working or trying to sleep enough to go back to work, so I was pretty much in charge of us. We had a pact that we’d work our way out of poverty. I put us both through college and helped fund Malcolm’s first investment firm. It’s crazy, but we both achieved our goals.” She sighed and her shoulders sagged. “I didn’t realize Malcolm built his fortune by stealing from others. I didn’t know. And then when I did know, I just kept trying not to believe it. But the other day at the park, I couldn’t pretend anymore. I knew I had to do something.” Her eyes were bleak. “I turned him in.”

“Who did you turn him in to?” Avery was still skeptical. Madeline wondered if she was going to demand a name and phone number.

“Giraldi.”

“Your friend Joe?”

“My FBI agent Joe,” Nikki corrected. “I called him and told him where to find Malcolm.” She swallowed. “I imagine they’ve taken him into custody by now. I haven’t seen anything on the news. I headed right for Bella Flora when I saw the hurricane warning for Pass-a-Grille.”

Maddie didn’t know whether Avery was as floored by Nikki’s revelations as she was, but she didn’t press for more detail. The blonde’s gaze slid from Nicole to the rattling window where she could just make out the shadows of what might be a stand of palm trees—or some triple-headed monster—swaying madly in the wind.

The lights flickered and snapped off. The air-conditioning shuddered to a halt and the blare of the TV went off in midbeep. It grew deadly calm outside.

No one spoke. Or moved. Until Kyra lifted her cell phone up and pressed a key creating a small glow of light. The others followed suit.

“This is when you’re not supposed to go outside,” Kyra whispered in the same kind of voice one might use to tell spooky stories around a campfire. “It’s either the wind changing direction or maybe part of the eye passing over us. You go out thinking it’s over and get trampled by the rest of the hurricane.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Maddie said. “And neither is anyone else.”

“I couldn’t get out of this bathtub if I wanted to,” Avery said. “Not without a crowbar.”

“I hope Bella Flora is okay.” Kyra still whispered. Maddie reached over and slipped her arm around her daughter’s shoulders.

“She has to be. I refuse to believe fate, or nature, or whatever is at work could ignore how much we poured into her,” Maddie said.

“Do you really think it works that way?” Deirdre asked. “That hard work is rewarded and evil gets punished? Where have you been living—in never-never land?”

Maddie flushed with anger. They were cowering in a moldy bathroom; how many other harsh realities did they have to face?

“Call it whatever you want, but where I come from we don’t abandon our children.”

Avery went very still and Maddie feared she’d somehow managed to offend both mother and daughter. “I’m sorry, that was . . .”

“No, don’t apologize,” Avery said. “I’d really like to hear what Deirdre has to say to that.”

They all turned to Deirdre, who looked slightly less regal on her toilet throne. “I’ll say what I’ve been trying to say all along,” Deirdre began.

Avery’s tone was taunting, but even in the muted glow of their cell phones, Maddie could see that her eyes were sad. “You mean before we found out you were just using us to get your career back on track or after? Before you exposed Kyra and us to the paparazzi and the foul-mouthed Tonja Kay or after? Before you . . .”

“That’s enough!” Deirdre snapped. She stood and began to pace, but of course there was nowhere to go in the tiny and too-full space. In a certain kind of film, she’d go running out into the eye of the storm trying to outrun her daughter’s censure and never be heard from again. Maddie smiled at her flight of fancy. They were jammed into a really crappy hotel bathroom in a hurricane, not a Nicholas Sparks movie.

Deirdre stopped and leaned against the bathroom wall. “I’m sorry that being here has helped my career. I know that’s the worst possible insult to you, Avery. But that isn’t why I came.”

“Right.”

“Oh, I did come because my career was in the toilet. Just like you did,” she said. “But that was because there was no longer anything holding me there. I was out of excuses. I couldn’t pretend I was too busy to find you and try to make amends.”

If there had been anywhere else to go, Maddie would have led Kyra and Nikki out of the bathroom, but they were a captive audience. She remained still, wishing she could don Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak, but she wasn’t sure it mattered. Deirdre seemed far too intent on getting through to Avery to worry about them.

“Do you really think that before I came I knew about the merry band that would be assembled? Or that one of them would be a filmmaker with Internet savvy? That she’d happen to be pregnant by the husband of a Hollywood celebrity? You give me far too much credit, Avery. I’m a shitty mother, but even I am not that Machiavellian.”

They sat in the near dark listening to the wind whip back up again. The trees outlined in the window no longer swayed, they jitterbugged.

“Bottom line,” Deirdre continued, ignoring everything but the daughter who refused to look at her, “my career sucked. The thing I’d put before everything else had simply shriveled up and died. I heard you were in trouble and I hoped I could help enough that you’d want me around. That was my big plan.”

Avery made no comment. But Maddie could feel how intently she was listening.

“I married your father because he was a wonderful man and he loved me more than anybody ever had. Certainly more than my parents did.”