The Night Sister (17 page)

Jason could smell trouble as soon as he walked into the bedroom. He was exhausted. All he wanted in the whole world was to peel off his uniform, hit the shower, then make his way down to the kitchen, open up a beer, and mindlessly devour whatever the spicy thing was that Piper had stewing on the back of the stove.

Piper was sitting in the rocking chair in the corner of the bedroom, flipping through a magazine. As soon as he walked in, she closed it and stood up.

“I'll leave you two,” she said, and hurried out of the room without even meeting his eye.

Margot was propped up in bed, covers pulled tight to her neck. Her face was blotchy and puffy: she'd been crying.

He reached for her, his stomach twisting with worry. Had something happened with the baby? But why hadn't they called him?

“Margot? You okay?”

She flinched slightly and he pulled back his hand.

“What was going on between you and Amy?” Margot asked.

Jason drew a sharp breath. “Me and Amy? Nothing. What are you talking about?”

“You were there, in her house, last week. You went to see her.”

Shit. She knew. How could she know?

“What were you doing there, Jason?”

“I…” He fumbled for something to say, some way out of this. “Where did you hear that?”

“Piper visited Lou today. She said she came home from school last week and you were there with Amy. And I want to know what you were doing there, Jason.”

The girl. Of course.

But what the hell was Piper doing, talking to her? He took a deep breath to calm himself. He looked at Margot and recalled the feeling of her flinching at his touch. He could still feel her recoiling from him, moving farther away as the seconds ticked by. She inched her way over in the bed, putting as much space as she possibly could between the two of them.

He had to find a way to make this right.

Tell the truth,
his conscience told him.
Tell her everything.

Well, maybe not everything.

“Margot, it's not a big deal, really. Amy called me at the station. She was upset. She asked if I could stop by; she wanted to talk about something.”

“About what?” Margot asked.

“Her mom, mostly,” Jason said. “You know she put Rose in the nursing home? She was just really shaken up about some of the things Rose said when she started to get confused.”

Margot looked at him for a long time. “So
she
called
you
?”

“It seemed strange to me, too, believe me. Kind of random. But she said she remembered me as being objective. She wanted to talk to someone who wasn't involved.”

“Did she ever do this before?” Margot asked. “Call you and ask you to come over to
talk
? To be
objective
?”

Jason shook his head. “No. It was the first time, I promise.”

“Why, then? Why did she call
you
? Why now?”

“I don't know,” Jason admitted. He rubbed his face with the palm of his hand.

“And she just talked about her mother?”

“Pretty much.”

“What about? What was she so upset about?”

“Like I said,” Jason explained, “her mom had gotten pretty delusional. She was saying some whacked-out stuff.”

Margot was watching him carefully.

“What kind of whacked-out stuff?” she asked, twisting the covers.

No point lying now. God only knew how much the kid had told Piper, or how much of the conversation she might have actually heard in the kitchen that day. “Apparently, Rose believed that there were monsters at the motel.” He chuckled nervously. “She was trying to convince Amy.”

“Monsters?” Margot repeated.

“I know, crazy. Poor old Rose is a little off in the head,” Jason said. “I guess the years of hard drinking kind of took their toll.”

He shifted from one foot to the other and looked at his wife, who was now all the way over at the edge of the bed. Neither of them spoke.

“Why didn't you tell me?” Margot asked.

“I didn't want to upset you.”

Margot snorted out a disgusted laugh. “Upset me? Going to see an old friend, an old girlfriend even, wouldn't have upset me. Not if you'd come home and told me about it. But the fact that you lied about it, hid it from me—what am I supposed to do with that, Jason?”

“I never lied, I—”

She shook her head. “Sometimes a lie isn't what's said, but what's unsaid. An omission.”

“And what about the things you hide from me?” Jason snapped. He felt his temper rising, though he tried to rein it in. “Your
omissions
?”

“I have
never
hidden anything from you, and you know it!” Margot snapped back.

Jason took a breath, tried to keep his voice calm.

“You told me you didn't know what ‘29 Rooms' meant.”

Margot's face shifted from angry to guilty. She looked away.

“You
do
keep things from me,” he went on quietly. “Important things. You always have. I'm not an idiot, Margot. I know you, Piper, and Amy were up to something that summer, and that whatever it was ended your friendship. I was the outsider then, and I guess I'm still the outsider now.”

He watched her, waiting to see if she might finally tell him, finally let him in. But she remained silent, her lips tightly pursed.

“I swear,” Amy said as she fitted the master key into the lock on Room 3 and turned it. “It was an actual, for-real ghost.”

Their plan was to search each motel room for clues about what might have happened to Sylvie. Piper doubted they'd find anything, but, then again, she'd never have guessed they'd find long-lost Aunt Sylvie's suitcase hidden under the floorboards of the tower.

“Ghosts aren't real,” Margot said matter-of-factly as they entered the dusty, long-abandoned motel room. Just as with Rooms 1 and 2, there was nothing unusual in this one. A bed with the same ugly paisley bedspread, chewed through in spots by mice. The ceiling was crumbling, and the dim turquoise carpet was stained from water damage. There was a big scorch mark on the floor near the desk, in the exact shape of an iron.

Piper checked under the bed, and only found the foul smell of moldering carpet. Margot peeked into the bathroom, rattling the rings to the disintegrating shower curtain as she pulled it back.

Since Piper and Margot had arrived this morning, Amy had been insisting that some ethereal creature had visited her in the night.

“I swear,” Amy said. “I wasn't dreaming. I woke up and it was just like…there…at the foot of my bed.”

“And what'd it look like again?” Margot asked. “A dog with a human face, or a human with a dog face?”

Amy banged a drawer open, pulled out a mildewed Gideon's Bible. “You've gotta believe me! It was real! You believe me, don't you, Piper?”

Piper nodded. “Sure. I believe you saw
something.
Or thought you did.”

Amy shook her head and dropped the old Bible back in the drawer. “There's no
thought
involved. I opened my eyes and it was there, just kind of hovering, watching me sleep in the dark. I got a glimpse of a pale face, but it turned away, and then it was, like, all covered in fur, or like it had a fur suit on or something. And then it was like it had this dog face. With a snout and stuff. But then it was gone! Poof.”

“Maybe you just thought you were awake but you were still dreaming?” Piper suggested. “That happened to me once, I—”

“I was totally awake. This was not a dream!”

“Maybe it was Bigfoot,” Margot suggested.

Amy blew out an exasperated breath, making the pink bangs fly out. “Would you get serious? It was
not
freaking Bigfoot!”

“Okay,” Margot said. “So it was a pale-faced, furry ghost who just disappeared when you turned on the light?”

“Ugh, you guys are hopeless. Just forget it. If it comes back again, I'll get proof. I'll sleep with a camera next to my bed,” Amy said, and then sighed. “Let's get out of here. There's nothing in this room.”

“Three down, twenty-five to go,” Piper said. They left Room 3, locking the door behind them, and moved to Room 4.

“Lock on this one's broken,” Amy said, sticking the master key back in her pocket as she pushed the door open. She stepped into the room, then froze. “You smell that?”

“Cigarette smoke,” Piper said. The other rooms had smelled faintly of it, but this was much stronger.

And there was something else different, too. This room felt…
lived in.

Amy nodded and walked over to the window; an ashtray sat on the sill, with a barely smoked cigarette crushed in it.

“Someone's been here. This is no twenty-year-old cigarette butt.”

“Your grandma, maybe?” Margot said, sounding unconvinced.

Amy shook her head. “Nah. Why would she come all the way down here to smoke? Besides, she only smokes Virginia Slims. This isn't one of hers.”

Piper got down and looked under the bed. “Um—guys?—there's stuff under here. A bunch of stuff, it looks like.”

Amy pushed her aside and reached under to pull out a heavy pair of binoculars, then a red plastic flashlight. She switched it on. It worked. She dragged out a plastic two-liter Coke bottle full of water. Then a small paper bag, like what some kids carried lunch to school in.

“What the…” Amy said as she opened the bag and peered inside. She dumped the contents onto the bed: a skeleton key on a heavy ring, sunglasses, a silver earring, a few pieces of Tower Motel stationery, an old glass soda bottle, and a book of matches.

“What is all this stuff?” Margot asked, leaning in.

Amy picked up the earring. “This is mine. So are the sunglasses.”

“Creepy,” Margot said.

“Yeah,” Piper agreed, “maybe you've got your very own stalker. I mean, why would you have binoculars in here unless you were using them to watch the house? There's nothing else around.”

“Maybe it's the Bigfoot guy!” Margot said. “Mr. Man-Dog. Maybe he's been living here, watching you!”

“You should tell your grandma,” Piper said.

“No way! She'd probably call the cops, and they'd come and start poking around.”

Piper didn't think that was such a bad idea and almost said so, but she didn't want to sound like a baby.

“I say we put everything back,” Amy said. “Then we just keep an eye on it. We check the room several times every day. Maybe we'll catch our smoker.”

Piper agreed, but didn't like it.

She wasn't so sure she really wanted to catch the smoker, and even less sure that the smoker would respond very kindly to being caught by a bunch of girls.

And what if Amy's ghost was real—what if whoever had been staying here had sneaked up to the house and into Amy's room to watch her sleep?