CHAPTER THREE
Morning arrived in pieces.
First came the dull glow through the motel curtains.
Then the rattle of pipes in the wall. Then the sound of water drumming against tile as Selena stood under the shower in the Wilson Motel and tried to let the heat knock the stiffness out of her shoulders.
She could hear the water passing through a pipe somewhere, rattling like something trapped behind the plaster trying to escape the walls.
The room had been better than expected. The mattress had sagged only a little.
The sheets had smelled faintly of fabric cleaner.
She had slept in bursts, waking every few hours to unfamiliar creaks and the low rush of a truck on the road outside.
Still, it had been sleep. Enough to make the morning manageable.
Water streamed over her hair and down her back.
For a few seconds, with her eyes closed and steam curling around her face, she could almost imagine she was nowhere at all.
Not in Elmsview. Not a few miles from Eagleton.
Not about to walk into a sheriff’s department and face the man she had left behind.
Then the water turned freezing. Like the Arctic on a cold day.
Selena jerked back with a gasp and slapped a hand against the tile. “Jesus!”
Another blast hit her shoulders like melt-water off stone.
She twisted the knob. Nothing changed.
By the time she got out, skin prickling, towel wrapped tight around her, irritation had taken the place of whatever peace the hot water had brought her. She grabbed the phone from the bedside table and dialed the front desk.
It rang twice.
A young woman’s voice answered. “Wilson Motel Reception.”
“Hi, I’m in room four. The shower’s gone ice cold,” Selena said. “I don’t know if the water heater’s out or if something’s wrong with the room.”
A pause.
Then, faintly in the background, a man’s voice said, “Is that Selena? Room four?”
The girl on the phone covered the receiver, but not well enough. “I think it is, Dad.”
A chair scraped. Footsteps moved fast.
Selena closed her eyes for one second. Of course.
The line changed hands. “Selena? Eric Wilson. I’m coming down.”
“That’s really not nec…”
He had already hung up.
She set the phone back in its cradle and stared at it. “Perfect.”
No sense wasting time. She dropped the towel long enough to drag on underwear and jeans, then pulled a shirt over damp skin just as a knock sounded at the door.
When Selena opened it, Eric stood there with a metal toolbox in one hand and the same eager expression he had worn in the lobby the night before.
“Morning,” he said. “Teenage staff. I love her, but you can’t trust the younger ones with anything more technical than toast.”
Selena stepped back to let him in. “I appreciate this.”
“No problem. I’ll have it working in no time. Can you believe it’s like twenty-odd years since we were that age?”
Selena glanced at the doorway to the bathroom, hoping he’d take the hint.
But he continued. “I mean, it feels like a click of the fingers to me.”
“It seems like forever to me,” Selena said. But that was only half true. Some memories were fuzzy like watching an old movie, others jagged and sharp like broken glass. “Could you take a look at the shower? Sorry, I don’t mean to rush you.”
Eric held up his hand and said: “Say no more. You’re a busy lady.”
He crossed the room like he had been waiting years for an excuse to be useful in front of her.
Setting the toolbox down, he rolled up his sleeves and headed straight for the bathroom.
The motel room suddenly felt smaller with another body in it, especially one who kept glancing back at her with an energy that had less to do with plumbing than it did with the girl he remembered from school.
She had no intention of being someone’s nostalgic therapy.
Selena leaned against the dresser and watched him crouch near the tub.
“You always this responsive to maintenance complaints?” she asked.
Eric looked up with a grin. “Only for special guests.”
She gave him a polite smile and said nothing.
Metal clinked. Water hissed briefly, then stopped. Eric worked with more confidence than skill, though maybe that was unfair. Motel owners probably learned every kind of repair whether they wanted to or not. After a minute he turned the shower on again. Steam rose.
He stood and looked almost too pleased with himself. “There. Knew it was the mixer valve.”
“You fixed it fast.”
“I guess I’m still good for something around here. I think some people around here look down on me sometimes.”
Selena folded her arms loosely, feeling sorry for him. Eric had been one of the cool ones. The guy girls wanted to be with. The guy people thought would jump in his Camaro one day and head off out of town, kicking up dust and never looking back. But no, he stayed. A ghost in his old haunts.
She gave him a soft smile. “Running a motel counts as something, Eric. You’ve done better than you think.”
“Depends who you ask.” He picked up his toolbox. “Sorry, Selena. You don’t want to hear all that. I work so many hours up here; I don’t get much time to catch up with people from back in the day. Any that want to, that is.”
His tone had shifted just enough for her to hear the edge beneath it. Elmsview and Eagleton had a way of measuring people by what they might have become somewhere else. Eric probably knew that. Most people who stayed did.
He wiped his hands on a rag and closed the toolbox. “You heading out today?”
“I am.”
“Then I won’t keep you.”
Another glance. Another smile that wanted to linger.
Selena picked up her jacket from the chair. “Thanks for fixing that, Eric.”
“Any time.”
She believed that.
That was part of the problem. He had that midlife desperation hanging on his shoulders, where people waste their time looking more back than forward until they realize time is short.
Selena had just turned forty, but that sense of bittersweet nostalgia was something she wanted to avoid at all cost. And she’d been doing a good job of it for fifteen years until she was sent home. Now she had to face what was out there.
Outside, the morning had a pale, washed look. Clouds hung low over the hills, and the motel parking lot still held last night’s dampness in dark patches across the asphalt. Selena took a breath, locked the room behind her, and headed to the rental car. The air smelled of woodsmoke somewhere nearby.
Eric stood in the doorway of the lobby and lifted a hand as she drove off.
Selena gave a brief wave and kept going.
Elmsview looked smaller than she remembered in daylight.
That happened to every place people left young and returned to older. Roads narrowed. Buildings dipped closer to the ground. Corners once full of mystery turned into places that sold feed or insurance, swallowed up by the mundane.
Still, the town held itself together better than she might have expected.
Old storefronts lined the main drag in red brick and faded paint.
Davy’s hardware store still stood beside a pharmacy that had somehow survived the chain stores out on the highway.
The park near the church sat empty this early, swings hanging still, their seats dark with dew.
Selena used to sit on those swings in the evening as a teenager, sneaking a drink there when her best friend, Jessie, managed to swipe something from her dad’s liquor cabinet.
They’d talk about leaving the town, shaking the dust of the place off their feet and having adventures together.
Those adventures never came. Selena left and Jessie stayed. That was how life went sometimes.
At the far end of Main Street stood the cinema.
Or what was left of it.
The red and gold marquee was blank now. One cracked letter clung stubbornly to the board. Posters no longer filled the front cases. Plywood covered one of the glass doors, and weeds had pushed up through the edge of the sidewalk out front.
Selena slowed without meaning to.
She and Connor had gone there countless times as teenagers.
Cheap horror movies. Action films they both pretended were better than they were.
Saturday matinees when summer heat made the inside of the theater feel like a refuge.
Later, when they were married and money had been tight, they still went sometimes because two tickets and stale popcorn counted as a night out.
It was a simple time. Before the suspicions.
Before the crash. Before it all went bad.
Now the place looked like a memory no one had wanted badly enough to save. The sight of it filled her with sadness.
Elmsview had always been quaint in its own rough way.
Front porches. Flower boxes. Shopkeepers who knew everyone’s name.
But the town wore strain now, too. Paint that had gone too long without refreshing.
Rooflines needing work. Empty windows where businesses had folded.
The slow settling wear of places money passed through without staying.
Selena turned off Main Street and headed toward the sheriff’s department.
In the last fifteen years, Selena had built a reputation for being no-nonsense.
For being tough. It was a lie. A fabrication to make her fit the mold the higher-ups needed.
But when she saw the sheriff’s department come into view, that’s when her nerves kicked in.
A tightening in her stomach as the building came into sight.
Low brick structure. County flag out front.
Two patrol SUVs parked side by side. Familiar and unfamiliar at once.
But it was who was inside that caused her discomfort.
She cut the engine and sat for a moment.
Then she got out and reached the front doors.
Inside, the sheriff’s department smelled of coffee, copier toner, and old linoleum. Phones rang somewhere deeper in the building. A deputy passed carrying a file box and gave her a curious glance that lasted half a second too long.