After Nick leaves, I watch him walk down the hall, then back down those creaky stairs. When I swivel my head, the door to room 202 is cracked open again.
And this time, there’s a single eye staring out at me.
I raise my hand in a tentative greeting, but before I can even get it in the air, the door swings shut again. Okay then. I take a cue from my neighbor and shut my door behind me. I turn the lock, then notice the deadbolt on top. I hesitate for a moment, then throw that as well. Not that I think anybody is going to murder me in the shower, but
better not to take chances.
My shirt and pants stayed relatively dry under my coat, but my socks and sneakers are absolutely soaked. I kick off my sneakers and then peel my socks off my feet. Fortunately, there’s a radiator in the room, next to the window, so I put my wet sneakers and socks on top of it.
The view from the window overlooks a small, two-story house a stone’s throw away that looks as badly in need of repair as the motel itself. It’s hard to see with the ice coming down, but light is on in one of the second-story windows. There’s the outline of a woman sitting in the window. That must be Rosalie, Nick’s wife. I awkwardly raise my hand to wave to her.
She doesn’t wave back. People don’t seem terribly friendly here. And that’s just fine.
I step away from the window and open up my luggage. It takes me less than a minute to realize the horrible truth. I forgot to pack socks. I brought my jewelry, but I didn’t bring socks. If Claudia were here, she would tease me mercilessly. And I would deserve it, because who goes on the run without bringing a few pairs of socks with them?
God, I miss Claudia so much. It’s a good thing the phone doesn’t dial outside lines, because I would be painfully tempted to call her. And that would be a terrible idea, even though I’m desperate to hear her voice just one last time. If she were with me, I would have known to pack socks.
If I had listened to her in the first place, I never would have married Derek.
She warned me. Repeatedly. She told me she didn’t think he was a good guy. But he was just so perfect when he was courting me. There was no way to know what kind of monster he was.
But up until today, I didn’t know quite how awful he was. Some of our senior staff had to go to a conference this weekend, so they all took off early. The bank closed shortly after lunch, and we were given an unexpected half-day. I was excited to have an afternoon off. I rarely had the house to myself, and I thought I could take a nice long shower, then watch television as loud as I wanted without Derek
yelling at me to keep it down.
But then when I walked through the front door, Derek was already home. I was shocked to see him. And he seemed even more shocked to see me. The second I entered the living room, his face contorted in anger.
What are you doing here? he demanded to know.
Nothing, I stammered. I got out of work early, that’s all.
Are you sure that’s all you’re here for? Or are you meeting some guy?
I tried to explain about the conference. The unexpected half day. I plastered a smile on my face and tried to suggest we do something together, as a couple. Maybe go to the movies or go shopping. Or up to the bedroom, even.
But Derek couldn’t let it go. He kept insisting I came home to meet another man. And the jealousy was ironic, given I was certain he had cheated on me many times. He even kept an apartment in Boston, which he claimed was for
business purposes since his company is based in the city, but I’m pretty sure it was his little bachelor pad.
I tried to talk him down, but it became obvious he was working himself into a rage. I had never seen him quite like this. But even when his hands balled into fists, I didn’t really think he was going to hurt me until I felt his hands around my neck.
And that was the last straw. He pushed me around long enough. I would not let him take my life.
The part that I still don’t understand is why he got so angry this time. For a moment, when I first came home, he had been smiling. I thought he was having a good day. I thought we might have a pleasant afternoon together. He seemed happy to see me, and then a second later, the smile dropped off his face. I don’t understand why…
Oh my God.
It finally makes sense. Why he was smiling when he heard someone was at the door, then he immediately got angry. He was happy because he didn’t know it was me. He was expecting somebody else.
Another woman.
I sink down onto the bed, shivering from my cold feet. It makes total sense. Derek came home early to meet some other woman. And when he saw me, he was angry because I had ruined his tryst by showing up. Also, in his warped mind, he assumed anyone coming home early was there to fool around, because that’s what he was doing.
I feel sick. This is not good news. I can only hope that in the last minutes of his life, Derek sent a text message to his girlfriend to tell her not to come. Because if he didn’t…
The police may have already discovered his body.
And if that’s the case, it means they’re already looking for me. And I have left them a wonderful trail of breadcrumbs. That gas station. The police officer who pulled me over for the broken tail light, for God’s sake. And here I
am, a sitting duck in a hotel only about twenty minutes from where I was last spotted.
But then again, there’s a blizzard evolving outside. That will make it hard for them to search for me. And moreover, the blizzard makes it impossible for me to leave. Not tonight, anyway.
I grab the remote control from the end table and turn on the television. Immediately, snow fills the screen. That’s right—this television has an antenna. I can’t remember the last time I dealt with a television antenna. I have only vague memories of my parents fiddling with an antenna when I was barely out of diapers. I didn’t know they even still made television antennas. But then again, this TV looks extremely old—like they bought it cheap at a pawn shop. Everything in this hotel looks like it was made several decades ago.
I get up out of bed and wince as my bare feet touch the freezing wooden floor. I walk over to the television and attempt to adjust the antenna. After a minute, I get a clear picture, although if I let go of the antenna, it fades away. So I guess I have to stand here if I want to watch television.
I don’t want to watch television. I just want to see the news.
There’s a pretty, blond woman on the screen, announcing the top stories for the night. Mostly, they’re talking about the blizzard. I listen carefully, waiting to hear anything about the murder of a thirty-four-year-old man named Derek Alexander.
Nothing. Maybe I’m in the clear. At least for now.
I shiver again. My feet feel like blocks of ice. How could I forget to bring socks? Who would be that stupid? Then again, it’s not like I was thinking clearly.
After a moment of consideration, I release the antenna, and the picture on the television turns to snow again. But that’s fine. I pick up the phone and dial zero.
It rings about five times before I hear Nick’s voice on the other line. “Kelly? Everything okay?”
My first thought is, Who is Kelly? Then I remember.
“Um…” I feel a little silly asking this. “I’m just wondering… Do you have any extra socks?”
He chuckles. “Well, no. Not here. I could ask my wife if…” He pauses. “You know what? You should ask Greta. In room 202. She’ll give you some socks.”
“Greta?” Given that she slammed the door in my face when I was about to wave to her, I’m reluctant to knock on her door and attempt to ask her for socks. “She doesn’t seem very friendly.”
“No, she’s just… She’s nice. Really. She’s an old woman.
Harmless.”
“I don’t know…” My eyes dart over to the radiator, where my socks still look sopping wet. If anything, they look even more wet than when I put them there. “I guess I could ask…”
“She’ll be happy to give you some socks. She’s a little eccentric, but she’s just lonely. But I promise, she’s nice. She’s lived here for years.”
I’m not excited about this, but Nick doesn’t seem like he’s going to rustle up a pair of socks for me. So if I want my feet to be warm and dry, this is my only option. “Okay.”
“And I’ll be up in a few minutes with the turkey sandwich. Sorry… I got a bit… delayed.”
After we hang up the phone, I stare at the door to the room. Nick said the woman in 202 is a harmless old lady, but there was something about those eyes staring out at me from the crack in her door. It creeped me out. And if the police do eventually show up here looking for me, I don’t need another witness they can talk to.
Then again, my feet are freezing.
To hell with it. I flip open the deadlock and unlock the door, then I tromp across the hallway in my bare feet to room 202. I hesitate for half a second, then knock on the door.
After a good ten seconds, I hear a voice behind the door. “Who is it?”
“Um, hi.” I chew on my thumbnail—a bad habit I had as a child that seems to have resurfaced. “I’m staying in room
203. Across the hall. And… I was wondering if you could help me out with something.”
There’s a long silence. For a moment, I wonder if she simply walked away. But then I hear the turning of locks, and a second later, the door cracks open.
For the first time, I can see her clearly. She’s older than I thought. Her hair is long and fine, and as white as the snow falling outside. Every millimeter of her face is lined with wrinkles. Her watery blue eyes stare up at me.
“What do you need?” she says in a crackly voice. She sounds like she used to be a smoker. Or maybe she still is, but I don’t smell cigarette smoke coming from her room.
I smile apologetically. “Socks, actually. I forgot to pack them for my trip.”
Her eyes drop to my bare feet. Then back up again to my face. “You want to borrow a pair of socks?”
“Yes.” I squeeze my hands together. “I’ll rinse them out in the morning when my own socks are dry.”
“If you are going on a trip, it is important to pack socks.” “Right. I know. I just forgot.”
She considers this for a moment. Finally, she backs away from the door and opens it enough to allow me inside.
Room 202 looks a lot different from my room. It’s about the same size, maybe slightly larger, but it looks lived in. Nick told me she has been staying in this room for years, and I believe it. Instead of the stiff bedspread in my own room, her blankets are made of wool and covered with exotic multicolored patterns. She has multiple lamps that give the room a yellow glow. And the wall is lined with mirrors, so I can see myself no matter where I look.
I don’t look too good right now.
“I am Greta,” she says. She has the very slightest hint of an accent that I can’t identify. East European, I think.
“I’m Kelly,” I say.
She sniffs. “If you do not want to give me a real name, don’t even bother.”
I open my mouth to protest, but then shut it. She’s right.
That isn’t my real name.
As I wait for Greta to rifle around inside her dresser drawer, I look down at a deck of cards she has on her dresser. It takes me a second to realize that they’re not playing cards, but rather Tarot cards. Next to them is an orb that glows in the yellow light of the room.
Greta sees me noticing them and comments, “I was a fortune teller at a carnival for thirty years.”
I manage a smile. “So you can read the future?”
She pauses for a moment and looks up at me. Her watery blue eyes rake over my bedraggled appearance. “For some, yes.”
I don’t really believe in any of that stuff, but I don’t tell her that. It seems like she’s getting a kick out of trying to freak me out. As long as I get my socks.
“I have stockings,” she finally says, as she pulls a pair of crinkled tan stockings from the drawer. “Is it socks you require?”
“Well, I don’t require them.” I shift between my feet. “But if you have them…”
Greta holds up a finger. She throws open the closet on the wall and pulls out a large black trunk that probably weighs more than she does. She fiddles with the lock to get it open. I feel guilty that she’s going to so much trouble for a pair of socks.
“Have you lived here a long time?” I ask politely.
“Many years,” she confirms. “Since I retired.” She raises her eyes. “You are in room 203.”
“That’s right,” I say. “And I guess 201 is empty then.”
The lock on the trunk opens with a click. “Nick always leaves 201 empty.”
I nod. “Because of the leaky pipe, right?” “No,” she says. “Not because of that.” “Then… why?”
“Because…” Greta pulls a ball of socks out of the trunk and gets back on her feet while holding onto the wall for support. “Because a couple of years ago, a woman was murdered in there.”
She says it so matter-of-factly, like this is something everyone must know. That somebody was killed here in the recent past.
Yet again, I desperately wish I had my phone. I could find out in a second what went down at the Baxter Motel. I have a feeling Greta here knows all the details.
“What happened?” I ask.
Greta clutches the sock ball in her hand, studying my face with her shrewd eyes. “It was a pretty young woman, like you. About your age. Also with blond hair. Her name was Christina Marsh. She came to stay here for a few days, but then I noticed she hadn’t come out of her room in a while.” She looks over my shoulder, at something in the distance. “It wasn’t just that though. Something was wrong. I knew it. So I told Nick to go check on her. And…”
I stare at her, not wanting to hear the rest of the story.
But unable to keep from hearing it.
“She was lying in her bed, stabbed to death,” she says. “Nick found her there. The police said she’d been dead for about a day.”
I clasp my hand over my mouth. “That’s horrible. Did they ever find out who did it?”
She shakes her head slowly. “They never did, but they suspected Nick. There were no signs of forced entry, so it stood to reason whoever killed her had access to her room.” “Oh.” I remember my first impression of Nick, and how I thought he was the sort of person who wouldn’t hurt a fly.
But impressions aren’t always right. “Do you think that he…?”
Greta is silent for a moment. She stares up at me with those watery, red-veined eyes.
“No,” she says. “Nick would never do something like that. The police had it wrong. I told them as much.”
I let out a breath and my shoulders sag. I don’t know what I would have done if Greta told me she thought Nick was a murderer. But of course she wouldn’t think that. Why would she live here if she thought the owner was a killer?
“But there was another reason they thought Nick killed her,” she adds.
I raise my eyebrows. “What reason?”
Her slightly yellow tongue protrudes from her mouth and she licks her lips. “I don’t like to tell tales.”
Really? Because it seems to me she likes to tell tales very much. But I can’t say that.
She holds the socks out to me, and I take them. The material feels rough in my hands, like they haven’t been worn in decades. But they will do.
“Thank you,” I say.
She nods. “Be careful.”
I don’t know what she means by that. She’s not wrong— I am in danger. But she doesn’t know why.
As I turn, I come face-to-face with yet another mirror. Why does she have so many mirrors in her room? It’s hard to look at myself right now. My blond hair is limp and lifeless, and so short now that I don’t even recognize myself. My eyes look sunken in their sockets, and my cheeks are dark as well. If anything looks frightening in this place, it’s me.
“I love mirrors,” Greta tells me. “Mirrors are the barrier between the conscious and unconscious mind. Everyone has an inner concept of themselves, but mirrors are reality. What you see right now—that is the truth that everyone else sees.”
“Right,” I mumble.
“If you stay here,” she says, “I’ll do a reading for you tomorrow. You may find it enlightening.”
“That’s okay. I’m not staying.” “The future may surprise you.”
If I wasn’t feeling so uneasy, I might have rolled my eyes. This woman can’t see into the future. She doesn’t even have socks in her drawer. She’s obviously trying to scare me. I bet nobody even died in room 201. She probably made the whole thing up to freak me out.
Well, it won’t work.
“Thanks for the socks,” I say. “I’ll leave them on your doorstep in the morning.”
“Keep them,” she says. “You should have an extra pair of socks.”
It’s a nice gesture, although the second I make it out of here, I’m going to buy some socks in a drugstore or something. And some hair dye.
I slip out of her room, the socks clutched in my right hand. I can’t see the future but I predict I will never see this woman again.
