Chapter Two #2
“Welcome to Sweetside, Sarah.” The corners of Caleb’s eyes crinkle, and Sarah imagines his square jaw smiles with very straight, very white teeth. “Let’s get you in the truck. You must be freezing.”
“Remember, Miss Sarah, you’re not to leave the motel for two weeks. I’ll be checking up on you. Don’t make us board you in.” The officer thumps the plywood in the back of the truck.
With his mask on, she can’t tell if he’s joking. She nods, her mouth dry. Caleb opens the passenger-side door for her, and she climbs into the cab. There’s no going back now, but there was no going back hours ago when she got into her car and started driving.
Caleb slams the door and waves at the police officer, then gets into the driver’s seat. Sarah hugs her backpack to hide the frightened staccato of her heart. For months, it had only been her and Ben in 650 square feet, and now she’s trapped in a tiny space with a man again.
After Caleb pulls off onto the highway, he turns up the heat in the truck. Sarah whimpers gratefully as her toes begin to thaw. “I couldn’t help noticing you’re not dressed for the weather,” he says.
He’s so close that Sarah can feel his voice vibrating inside her ribcage. She hugs the backpack tighter. “It wasn’t snowing in Toronto when I left,” she lies. She’d been in such a hurry to flee that she’d stuffed her feet into the first pair of shoes by the door.
She tries to calculate if she has enough cash to pay for the motel as well as food delivery. They might trace her cards. “What’s your nightly rate?”
“Don’t worry about it. We’re paying for hydro anyway until the end of the month. Heat’s gotta stay on so the pipes don’t freeze, so it doesn’t make a difference to us if you’re there to enjoy it.”
“Thank you. That’s very kind.” She’s not used to kindness. Kindness sends her arms tensing around her backpack, wondering if the truck is going too fast for her to jump out of it.
Caleb smirks. “Don’t think I’m a saint. It’s also out of guilt. I’m guessing Uncle Isaac gave you a hard time. I bet Jerry was an asshole, too.” He shakes his head. “Sweetside was paranoid about strangers even before the pandemic. And I imagine since you’re—” He waves his hand toward her.
“You don’t care that I’m Chinese?” she says lightly. Smile. Make it a joke, so they don’t think you’re accusing them of anything.
“I went to college in Toronto. I know there’s a world outside Sweetside. And,” he adds, the corners of his eyes crinkling again, “I don’t get my news from the comments section.”
She relaxes a little, but the sooner she gets behind a locked door, the better. Caleb’s friendliness could still be an act. She’s well-acquainted with deceptive charm.
“So, tell me about yourself, Sarah,” Caleb says. “What do you do?”
“I’m a freelance writer. Mostly marketing copy, and some editing.”
“Oh, that’s good. So you won’t have been affected much by the lockdown.”
He doesn’t notice her smile waver.
The town sign emerges from behind the snow on the side of the road. WELCOME TO SWEETSIDE POPULATION 1,500. Someone has spray-painted STAY OUT underneath in furious red strokes, and Sarah feels like they’ve written the message specifically for her.
Caleb sighs. “Well, I’m sorry you’re not experiencing the best hospitality Sweetside has to offer. Here we are.”
A low-slung shape appears ahead. A roadside motor inn, the mainstay of tourist routes that predates hotel franchises and loyalty programs. Sarah passed many of them during her flight up Highway 11.
It made her nostalgic for the road trips she’d taken as a kid through cottage country, Ba-Ba at the wheel of the car, Ma-Ma flipping through the Ontario tourism guidebook with all the accommodations within their price range highlighted.
Sarah and Graham would sit in the back, separated by the picnic cooler.
At the time, she’d never noticed anything unusual.
Now she wonders if the locals peered at her family with the same suspicion as Jerry and Officer Isaac.
Maybe that was why Ba-Ba preferred motels to hotels, because you never have to pass other people in a hallway.
Caleb takes the next exit, rumbling off the road into the deserted parking lot.
To Sarah’s relief, the motel is not actually called the Suicide Motel.
An unlit monolith of a sign proclaims Sweetside Motel in a retro script.
Below it, black movable letters spell out CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE STAY SAFE.
The building itself is single-story, cast from the same mold as the motels Sarah remembers staying at as a child.
White aluminum siding stained grey by the darkening sky, the peaked roof crusted with snow.
Each unit is marked by an orange door and a concrete planter filled with frosted, dead flowers.
It might have been cheerful, if not for the frigid weather and air of abandonment.
“I’m afraid wifi’s been turned off, but otherwise, everything’s still on.
You came just at the right time,” Caleb says, and Sarah fights off a bitter laugh.
“In a couple weeks, the water will be shut down too. We thought about keeping it open, but our housekeeper’s in the hospital, and I don’t think anyone will be taking advantage of ski season this winter anyway.
” He parks the truck and twists the key out of the ignition.
It jangles against a half-dozen other keys as he hooks the carabiner keychain on his belt loop.
“Are you sure I can’t pay you?” She doesn’t want to be indebted to anyone, especially now.
“Oh, don’t worry about us.” He climbs out of the truck and comes around to the passenger side to open her door. Sarah clambers down, ready to run from this too-considerate man if she has to.
“We don’t really need the money,” he says, and then she sees the house.
The house lurks a little distance behind the motel, on a rising slope crowned by tall trees. In the fading twilight, Sarah makes out red brick, high gables, and gingerbread trim. The number of gables betrays that the house is large, but beneath the imposing pines, it resembles a dollhouse.
A hulking silhouette stands in a lighted window on the second floor. The hairs on the back of Sarah’s neck lift, and it’s not just from the cold.
She turns back to Caleb, a question in her eyes. He nods. “My brother Elijah and I live up there.”
Sarah looks up at the house again. It’s now completely dark. The tension in her abdomen spasms, releasing a nervous titter. “You don’t have a dead mother in the basement, do you?” She regrets the joke as soon as it slips out of her mouth.
Caleb scratches his head. “Well, a boy’s best friend is his mother.”
He chuckles at her startled expression. “I’m joking! She’s buried in the Sweet family plot on the other side of town. She passed away from cancer when I was a kid.”
Thank goodness Sarah’s mask hides her burning face. “Oh my God. I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right; it was a long time ago. Come on.”
He picks another key from the cluster hanging from the carabiner and unlocks the door to the darkened motel office.
Sarah hangs back in the doorway while Caleb flicks on a light and slips behind the reception desk.
The office looks like it closed decades ago, instead of earlier this year.
Wood paneling lines the walls, and a brown leather loveseat slouches below a Robert Bateman print of a wolf.
The only modern touch is a painting hanging on the wall behind the desk.
Black conifers crowd the large canvas, the brushstrokes unsettling in their violence.
“How about lucky number seven?” Caleb grabs a key hanging on a pegboard, an actual metal key with a red diamond-shaped tag. “All our units have a mini-fridge and a kettle. I can pick up groceries for you tomorrow if you want to make a list. You okay for tonight, though? I can bring you a sandwich.”
It’s a nice thing to do. Sarah shrinks back as he comes out from behind the desk. Nice can be taken away at the drop of a hat. Nice makes it more devastating when they turn on you, teeth bared. Nice is how they control you.
Sarah’s stomach is hollow, though not from hunger. “I’m good, thanks.”
Caleb leads her to a unit in the middle of the building. He unlocks and then holds the door open, and she sucks in her breath to make herself smaller as she squeezes past. He’s a big man, taller than Ben and wider in the shoulders. All the more reason for her to not appear threatening.
The room smells faintly of bleach and the burned musk of an electric baseboard heater.
Caleb flips a switch by the door, and a floor lamp flickers to life.
They could be in any two-star motel in the country.
Two double beds in matching salmon-and-jade bedspreads.
Cream-colored lampshades on brass fixtures.
Simple wooden furniture, all of which are stained the same shade of amber.
The anonymous familiarity is comforting.
Like the office, the only modern touch other than the flatscreen TV is the paintings hanging above each bed.
The canvases are only a couple feet square, but the painted pines seem to burst out of the edges.
In the lamplight, the paint appears almost sculptural, as if the trees are made of thick black tongues.
The brutal energy of the brushstrokes is dizzying.
Sarah feels that if she were to touch the surface of the canvas, the trees would drag her into their depths.
“Think about what you might need for two weeks and let me know.” Caleb reaches into his jacket and pulls out a business card.
He hands it to her, along with the room key.
SWEETSIDE MOTEL, the card says. YOUR NORTHERN GETAWAY.
“The number will reroute to the house. Feel free to call anytime. One of us is always up.”
“Thank you,” Sarah says, laying a hand over her heart. If she appears sufficiently grateful, he’ll leave, and she can take off her coat and wash the blood-stiff fleece scratching her breastbone.
He takes his weight off the door. Sarah instinctively holds it open and watches him walk to the truck. Her body remembers doing the same whenever guests left her home. It’s funny, the things the body remembers even though friends haven’t visited for years, not since she met Ben.
As soon as Caleb is a safe distance away, he unhooks his mask and turns to face her. He’s in his mid-thirties, a little older than Sarah, with a straight nose, square jaw, and wide cheekbones roughened with dark stubble. In the dusk, his blue eyes are so drained of color they’re almost clear.
In short, he looks like the kind of man who rescues stranded women. Sarah tenses against the open door, the business card creasing in her cold fingers.
“Have a good night, Sarah,” he says. She was right about how white and straight his teeth are.
The polite thing to do would be to reveal her own face and thank him again. But she’s not ready to take the mask off. She wordlessly closes the door and slides the chain lock in place.