There was an enormous spider-shaped crack in the office window, as if someone had bounced a rock off the glass, or plugged it with a bullet. The word Vacancy glowed, dimly hopeful, in the lower right-hand corner, as in days of old, though only the V and the two c’s had any juice.
The whole effect was glum, and more than a little spooky. It wasn’t hard to imagine Norman Bates somewhere inside, sitting in his rocking chair, wearing his dead mother’s clothes and cradling an ax in his arms.
The image brought a badly needed smile to Shallie’s face, if a flimsy one. The motel was, and probably always had been, a depressing place, but it hadn’t been a house of horrors. Not for her, anyway.
Della and Norm Schafer, Shallie’s legal guardians from the day she was abandoned as a two-year-old, in Room 2, hadn’t physically abused her. Granted, they did apply for, and receive, foster parent status and money, largely because there was a legitimate family connection, since her mother had been Della’s half sister... Still, life hadn’t been easy.
Dysfunctional even then, discouragement ground into them by chronic hard times, the Schafers had fed her, provided her with clothes, mostly hand-me-downs and thrift store finds, and new shoes, twice a year. They’d kept her in school and, once a week, they’d sent her (and, of course, their own kids) to church.
Neither Della nor Norm would have dreamed of setting foot in God’s house themselves, and they hadn’t been shy about saying so. Church was for hypocrites and cowards, they’d maintained, though every Sunday morning, they’d sent their little brood off to hear the Gospel and drop a coin in the collection plate.
Throughout Shallie’s childhood, they’d treated her with the same disinterest and sometimes scorn as they had their twins, Bethanne and Russ, who were five years older than Shallie and none too pleased to have a toddler shoehorned into the cramped bedroom they shared in the “family quarters” behind the motel’s front office.
At first, the twins had largely ignored the newcomer.
Later, when bored, they’d teased and sometimes bullied her. They’d spent whole days pretending she was invisible, so convincingly that Shallie, still too young to start kindergarten, began to believe them. Maybe, she remembered thinking, she wasn’t real at all. Maybe she’d just made herself up.
To a four-year-old, the possibility made sense.
All her life, all that time spent living with the Schafers, she’d known that no one was going to protect her. She couldn’t depend on Norm or Della—they weren’t mean, but they paid little or no attention to the kids, unless they were forced to. Their interests usually didn’t veer past the bottles of low-end booze they gulped down and the equally low-end reality TV shows they devoured. Nor could she depend on Russ, who’d made clear that he had no use for her. Especially after an incident that involved her smacking him—hard enough to cause a bloody nose—when he’d tried to make her eat a stinkbug...
Bethanne seemed to resent Shallie as much as her brother did.
Shallie had herself, that was all.
But maybe at the time—and even now—that was enough.
Tonight, years later, sitting in her car with rain strafing the roof like bullets, Shallie sighed. She’d had to defend herself, and she didn’t regret it, but she felt profoundly sorry for the child Russ had been, overweight, unattractive and not considered bright, with a father who made fun of him. Held him in contempt.
Della hadn’t been much kinder.
Little wonder Russ was still hiding out in the Painted Pony Motel after all these years, even as the roof threatened to fall down around his ears.
Bethanne, if her social media posts could be believed, had fared better than her brother had. At first, anyway...
She’d split for the big city of Helena the day after high school graduation, rented a room in a private home, landed a job in a big-box store and put herself through cosmetology school. Eventually, she’d married and moved with her husband to a small town in West Texas. She was now Bethanne Robertson. She’d opened her own beauty shop and never returned to Painted Pony Creek—except briefly for her mother’s funeral—as far as Shallie knew.
For a while, Shallie and Bethanne had kept in touch via the internet, but gradually, they’d stopped emailing. Shallie, officially a “friend,” had still checked Bethanne’s Facebook page now and then, but she never updated her own information on the site, and there’d been nothing from Bethanne in more than two years. Where was she now? Shallie had no idea whether she was still married, still had her business, still lived in Texas.
From the little Shallie had been able to learn, mostly by reviewing the social media pages of high school classmates, Bethanne had started off doing well, which Shallie already knew. But recently—according to various rumors—she’d bounced between various county jails in Texas and court-mandated stints in rehab.
And indeed, there were rumors aplenty—Bethanne had joined a cult, met up with a serial killer, moved to Boise, found religion, remarried, witnessed a crime and gone into witness protection. Interesting theories, to Shallie’s mind, but only theories, mostly gossip and speculation at that, none of them supported by any evidence she could see.
In her opinion, Bethanne might well be dead. Despite some earlier success, she’d disappeared from everyone’s life, from social media, from sight. She’d been, or had certainly become, hell-bent on self-destruction, according to what several people claimed to have heard or observed. Most likely, she’d succeeded, with or without the help of another person. Was there any way of knowing?
Shallie had been secretive about her own location, in case Norm and Della came to expect some form of financial—or other—support. Some kind of payback... Della had been killed, ironically by a drunk driver, three years after Shallie left.
Norm had followed his wife a few months later, dying of “complications” after minor surgery. Although the online obit hadn’t said so, Shallie figured he’d been felled by a combination of grief and that bottom-shelf vodka.
In both cases, she’d sent brief notes of condolence, first to Norm and Russ, and then to Russ alone, accompanied by small checks. She hadn’t enclosed a phone number, however, or given a return address.
She had, in fact, gone so far as to mail both envelopes to a friend in Oklahoma City, who’d sent them on so they wouldn’t bear a Seattle postmark.
Silly, she thought now. It wasn’t as if any of the Schafers would have bothered to track her down and force her to come back into their lives.
In the end, only Shallie herself, odd girl out, forever underfoot, treated as an inconvenience when she’d been noticed at all, had escaped the glum legacy of Norm and Della Schafer and their combined neuroses. How had that happened?
Okay, yes, she hadn’t emerged entirely unscathed; she had issues, and some of them stemmed directly from things that had happened right here, but at least she hadn’t been trapped, like Russ, or irreparably damaged, like poor Bethanne—as it now appeared.
For whatever reason, Shallie had not only survived, she’d thrived, for the most part. She’d made some stupid mistakes, especially in the beginning, but she’d eventually gotten her act together after fleeing the town of Painted Pony Creek and this dump of a motel.
She’d come a long way...and she’d managed to create a life pretty much on her own terms. She’d landed in Seattle, after knocking around for six months or so, found a job—cleaning in a hotel (she’d certainly had the experience!)—and a room in a decent boardinghouse. Later, she’d put herself through art school and now worked as an illustrator; she’d saved her money, made friends, been married to a good man, even though that marriage had ended in divorce, and developed a passion for horses. Her best friend, Emma Grant, ran a therapeutic riding program for kids with physical and/or emotional challenges, just outside Seattle, and Shallie had spent every spare hour volunteering there and loved it. She and Emma had discussed how she might quit her graph
ic arts job and then they’d become business partners; she was currently on an unpaid three-month leave so she could explore that option—and pursue the other reason she was here...
The horses and the children had taken her out of herself, healed her in the broken places, taught her courage and persistence and the power of gentle persuasion.
She’d still be in Seattle right now, she reflected, if she hadn’t come to a decision about her life and particularly her past. If she didn’t have something urgent to do. Well, to be honest, she had three priorities.
And the first of them, in some ways the most urgent, had brought her back to a place she’d vowed never to set foot in again—no matter what.
Never say never, she thought ruefully.
Time to quit procrastinating and get started.
Resolved, Shallie took a long, deep breath, held it, thrust it out in a forceful gust. Then she shut off her car and pushed open the door.
She was immediately drenched by a cascade of rain, almost as if she’d been singled out for a private deluge.
That quickly, the long day on the road caught up with her. Ever since landing at the airport in Billings, renting a car, setting out, she’d felt a tension that was no longer familiar to her.
She was exhausted, weary down to her bones.
You can do this, Shallie reminded herself. Get moving, before you drown.
Taking her own advice, she shut the car door behind her and hurried toward the seedy motel’s tiny office.
Tonight, she had only one person from her past to face, and the sooner she did that, the sooner she could move on.
Reaching the door, she shoved hard and fairly hurled herself over the threshold. She’d half expected to encounter Russ first thing, but the office was empty.
Shallie paused, catching her breath, dripping rainwater onto the gray carpet, which had probably been some other color once upon a time. Even through the soles of her wet shoes, she could feel the stiffness of the pile and gave an involuntary shudder. God only knows when the rug had been vacuumed last, let alone shampooed.
She looked around, still lingering by the heavy glass door, which had fallen shut behind her.
The walls were even dingier than she recalled. There were cobwebs in the corners, and clutter covered the reception desk—magazines, junk mail, old newspapers and several coffee mugs. There was no computer, and the telephone was the same one Shallie remembered from her childhood, black and heavy, with a rotary dial. From where she stood, she could see that the numbers had been completely worn away.
The handbell still occupied its place on one corner of the desk, so Shallie reached out and gave it a brisk tap. A clamorous ting followed.
And she waited.
As her breathing slowed and her focus expanded, Shallie became aware of the drone of a TV set beyond the office wall, where the family had lived.
It was easy to imagine Russ settled in his dad’s old recliner, staring morosely at the screen and drowning his resentments in booze.
“Hello?” Shallie called, finally, when several minutes had passed and no one had appeared.
She was chilled, soaked to the skin, and she was ready to be done with this damn day, more than ready for a hot shower, a cold slice of pizza left over from a drive-through lunch, and eight solid hours of sleep. If not more.
“Hold your horses!” a male voice, surely Russ’s, called. “I’m coming!”
Apparently, the son-and-heir had inherited his parents’ flair for business, in addition to Motel Hell—and not much else, Shallie would have bet.
Finally, Russ lumbered in, a great hulk pushing the limits of ragbag sweatpants and a ratty T-shirt printed with some now unreadable but probably inflammatory slogan. Never the middle-of-the-road type, Russ had always chosen the course most likely to piss off as many people as possible.
Like his father before him, he had been aggrieved from birth, had scores to settle with the known universe and all its occupants.
Recognizing her, Russ came to a dead stop. With one sweep of his eyes, he took her in, head to toe.
“You,” he said, affronted it would seem, not only by Shallie’s presence, but by her very existence.
Maybe, Shallie thought, numb with fatigue, she should’ve waited until morning, come here in daylight. She could have booked a clean, pleasant room at the new-looking hotel in town, one with maids, room service and a Wi-Fi connection.
Except that she’d made a plan and intended to stick with it.
Like it or not, she was going to stay right here at the Painted Pony Motel, preferably in Room 2, where she’d been abandoned. There, she hoped, some dim fragment of memory might surface. A glimpse of her mother’s face, a murmured goodbye, a promise to return.
Anything.
Not that the odds were with her on that score—years of online searches had yielded no information whatsoever about Christine Fletcher—but if there was the slightest chance that being back in the same surroundings might trigger some glimmer of recollection, she had to try. This was the biggest unanswered question of her life.
It was time. Time to go back to the source. To search in a more concerted, more serious way.
Besides, Shallie couldn’t drive another mile, not after the day she’d put in. So, she clung to that one flimsy hope and resigned herself to a lumpy mattress, a moldy shower stall and a slice of rubbery pizza for supper.
“Hello, Russ,” she said quietly.
“What do you want?” he demanded, his tone curt.
Shallie raised her shoulders slightly, lowered them again. “A room?”
“Here?” Russ frowned. He seemed not only confused but suspicious now.
No, Shallie replied in her mind, at the high-end lodge I passed when I came through town. The one that doesn’t look like something out of a horror movie.
“Here,” she confirmed, hoping her voice sounded steady.
Russ studied her again, no friendlier than before. And he still hadn’t moved. “Why?”
Shallie sighed. She was really too worn-out for a sparring match, verbal or otherwise.
“Come on, Russ. I have my reasons. And I know you have rooms available—the vacancy sign is on.” Some of it was, anyway. “There aren’t any other cars in the lot, either.”
Russ spread his hands, his expression one of sly mockery. “Take your pick,” he said. “If you insist on being our guest.”
Wondering who the “our” might refer to, then promptly deciding she didn’t care, Shallie glanced at the rack on the wall behind the desk, where the room keys hung on tarnished hooks. No fancy magnetized cards at the Painted Pony; these were actual metal keys, with numbered plastic fobs attached. Most of the lettering was worn away, like the digits on the telephone dial.
“I’ll take Room 2,” she said, about to open her purse, which, she realized now, was pressed between her right elbow and her rib cage as though she’d expected to be mugged at any moment.
Russ arched his brows and set his bulk in motion. “Interesting choice,” he remarked dryly. “Room 2, I mean. Since that’s the one Crazy Christine dumped you in.” He didn’t wait for a response. “I don’t suppose you remember, you were so little, but I was the one who found you that day. Did I ever tell you that?”
“Yes, actually, you did.” Only about a thousand times.
He extended the key, fob dangling. “You were screaming at the top of your lungs,” Russ reminisced as if she hadn’t spoken. “You were naked, except for a wet diaper, and calling for your mama. By then, she was long gone, of course.”
Shallie resisted a sudden impulse to defend this woman, her mother, who was and most likely would remain a total stranger to her. Della’s story, when she could be persuaded to discuss the matter at all, had been pretty basic. Shallie was the daughter of Della’s half sister, Christine, which was why Della hadn’t been asked to sign
a registration card when she checked in that long-ago day. She’d been “family.”
And oh, yeah, Della Schafer had been all about kinship.
All Shallie really had was a name and a birth certificate. According to that, her father was “Unknown” and her birthplace was Chicago.
The real reason the Schafers had taken her in was, of course, far more prosaic—their monthly check from the state, very little of which had been spent on Shallie, or even Russ and Bethanne, but that was neither here nor there.
The one thing Shallie had really wanted from the Schafers—the truth—had not been forthcoming.
Which was why she’d started an investigation of her own.
It hadn’t been easy or productive, any more than her search for Bethanne.
There were a lot of Christine Fletchers in the world, as it turned out, and none of the dozens Shallie had contacted over the years had admitted to leaving a two-year-old daughter behind at the Painted Pony Motel a quarter of a century ago. More like thirty-plus years now.
She’d studied grainy photos online, hoping to spot a resemblance to herself, since she’d never seen a picture of Christine, hard as that was to believe. She’d surfed social media sites, pored over newspaper archives, looked at birth and death records in more states and counties than she cared to remember. She’d checked out cemeteries, mental hospitals, halfway houses and prisons.
All without a single lead.
So, here she was, back at good old square one. Her (mostly amicable) divorce from Rob had sparked an even greater need to know about Christine Fletcher—who she was, who her people were, what she’d been about. Della and Norm were both gone, of course, and Bethanne might be anywhere, including a pauper’s grave in some unknown place, but Russ was still around, and if he knew anything, Shallie was going to get it out of him, one way or another.
She also meant to question as many of the locals as she could corner; some of the older people might remember Christine and be willing to talk.
Country Strong--A Novel Page 4