“Of course,” Luke said. “You’ve already had dinner?”
For a moment she thought he was asking if he could join her. Her stomach clenched. Then she remembered that he had said he was working all night. He was just asking for information.
“No, we haven’t yet.” Her breath fogged the air as she spoke. “I suppose no one’s doing delivery tonight.”
“Not tonight.” Luke sounded apologetic, as if it were his fault that no one else was working. “But most of the restaurants around here are staying open. And there’s a church about three blocks away if you’re so inclined.”
“I think we’re too tired,” she said. She hoped. She didn’t want to leave the room after they’d eaten something. It was just too cold.
As if hearing her thoughts, Luke shivered. “I’m taking this in the back, then I’ll meet you.”
Without waiting for her to answer, he picked his way across the parking lot, slipping more than she liked.
The wind seemed even colder. Cars still whizzed by on the interstate behind her. The lights from the chain hotels and the chain restaurants that hugged this exit should have seemed festive, but they didn’t. They seemed like beacons of a past life.
She didn’t look at them, instead making certain she got across the slippery parking lot with her burden.
Luke went in a side door, then came back outside without the bag. He truly was Santa’s helper. He grinned, took the tree from her, and opened the main lobby doors.
Anne-Marie turned, eyes wide, as if she were expecting someone else, someone she didn’t want to see.
Rachel hated how jumpy her daughter had become.
“You brought the tree!” Anne-Marie said to Luke.
“I did indeed,” he said, then looked at Rachel. “Will you need help setting it up?”
Rachel was tempted, but she couldn’t quite face having a stranger take her to her room.
“Do you have a bellman’s cart?” she asked. “That’s all we need.”
He nodded as if he understood, then disappeared in the back, tree in hand. Anne-Marie watched it go as if he were never going to bring it back.
“Tough traveling on Christmas, isn’t it?” Sherrie said to Rachel.
“People are friendlier,” Rachel said, and it was true. People were friendlier, particularly when they saw her daughter. They assumed that Rachel was on her way to see relatives, that maybe she got behind or needed an extra bit of help.
She never dissuaded them.
“That friendly will end tonight,” Sherrie said. “The folks who show up after nine are generally upset because they can’t get to Grandma’s house or because they got no one to celebrate with.”
Rachel gave her a hard look, hoping she’d quit being negative.
Sherrie didn’t seem to notice. “Thank the good Lord for Luke, though. Ever since he came here, I haven’t had to work a Christmas Day. He calls it his gift to all of us.”
“He doesn’t have family?” Rachel asked, despite herself.
This time Sherrie did look at Anne-Marie. Anne-Marie was leaning toward one of the ornaments as if she’d never seen anything like it.
Sherrie shook her head. Anne-Marie turned around, as if she expected to hear Sherrie’s answer. So Sherrie put on a bright smile.
“He loves New Year’s. He takes the days around New Year’s off. One year he flew to New York to watch the ball drop. Said he damn near froze his ball—”
“Crudeness on Christmas is not allowed,” Luke said, interrupting her. He was dragging a gold bellman’s cart, with the tree set on one side of it.
“Where are you going this year?” Sherrie asked, as if she couldn’t be dissuaded from anything.
“Miami,” Luke said. “Party central. And it’s warm.”
At that word, Rachel shivered. She would give anything to live somewhere warm now, but that wasn’t in the cards. She had made her choices, and they were good ones.
Or they would be. Once she got to Detroit.
She set the overnight bags on the cart, careful not to knock the tree off it. Her shoulders ached from carrying the bags, and from the stress of driving.
Hours to go, she reminded herself, hearing her fourth-grade teacher intone Robert Frost’s most famous poem, just like she always did when she realized she couldn’t sleep no matter how exhausted she was.
“There’s an in-room Jacuzzi,” Luke said softly, loud enough that only she could hear him. “Perfect after a long day. Merry Christmas.”
“Thank you,” Rachel said. She had done nothing to deserve this man’s kindness, and yet he had given it to her.
The one thing she did not regret about traveling at Christmas was exactly what she had said to Sherrie: people were friendlier. It was as if a bit of the season had infected them and gave them just a little bit of joy.
“Come on, Anne-Marie,” she said, and Anne-Marie scurried to follow her.
Rachel wheeled the cart to the elevators behind the stairs. Anne-Marie didn’t even ask if she could ride it. She had in Cheyenne.
“Is Santa really going to find us?” Anne-Marie asked.
“If you fall asleep,” Rachel said as the elevator doors opened. “Just like last year.”
She regretted the words the moment she spoke them. Anne-Marie had a look of horror on her face.
Without Daddy, Rachel wanted to add. You don’t have to worry about Daddy.
But she didn’t. She’d mentioned last year, and she couldn’t take it back.
“I don’t like Christmas,” Anne-Marie said as she stepped inside, head down.
Rachel’s heart twisted. Little kids weren’t supposed to say that. Little kids were supposed to plan all year for Christmas, do special things to get in good with Santa, and be so excited that they couldn’t sleep the night before.
They weren’t supposed to turn off the Christmas specials and keep their faces averted during the commercials. Christmas wasn’t supposed to make them sad.
That emotion was for grownups, especially the ones for whom nostalgia was not enough.
Rachel put her hand on her daughter’s fuzzy little cap and didn’t say a single word.
Rachel put the little tree on the round table in the suite’s kitchenette. The suite was bigger than anything they had stayed in so far. It seemed like luxury, even though they hadn’t been traveling very long. Part of her had already forgotten the wealth in her past life.
She took small presents out of the overnight bag and scattered them under the tree, the first time she had done that. It made Anne-Marie frown.
“I got nothing for you, Mommy,” she said.
“It’s okay, baby,” Rachel said. “This trip is for me.”
Anne-Marie’s lower lip trembled, and Rachel wanted to curse Gil. He’d thrown a fit last year when he realized he hadn’t gotten as many presents as Rachel had. Anne-Marie had thought he was blaming her, when he wasn’t blaming anyone. He was just being an asshole, his specialty.
“I didn’t buy the trip,” Anne-Marie said softly.
“I know, sweetie,” Rachel said, making sure she sounded cheerful. “But you came with me.”
Anne-Marie let out a little sigh, then went to her toy bag and pulled out the stuffed dog that had become her lifeline. She set it on the bed nearest the kitchen, claiming that bed for her own.
“You hungry?” Rachel asked.
Anne-Marie nodded.
“Then bundle back up,” Rachel said. “We have to go outside again.”
They couldn’t really walk to the nearby restaurants, as much as Rachel wanted to. They had to drive, just because of the severe cold. They waved at Luke on the way out and got into the chilly van.
He had been right; most of the chain restaurants were open. Normally Rachel would have stopped at a super-large truck stop with six restaurants inside it, as well as shops and showers. No one noticed the people who came and went from those places.
But she decided not to because Anne-Marie had mentioned gifts. Rachel didn’t
want her daughter to attempt to buy something for her.
Instead they stopped at the closest family restaurant chain. They all had a disagreeable sameness to her. They smelled of coffee and grease, even in the evenings. They served pancakes at all hours, and usually had pies that looked a little tired in a glass case near the cash register.
This restaurant had an open floor plan, a busboy wearing an elf hat, a manager wearing a tie covered with reindeer, and a waitress whose brown uniform had no holiday decoration at all.
She waved them to a table, then brought waters and menus before Rachel and Anne-Marie could even get settled. They ordered, got halfway decent food, and some free cookies courtesy of the manager.
Rachel was trying to decide whether she wanted to pay with cash or a credit card when she heard Anne-Marie gasp. Anne-Marie’s face had gone a kind of white that Rachel hadn’t seen since they left Boise. A look that usually meant Anne-Marie had been doing something she thought her father would disapprove of.
Rachel followed Anne-Marie’s gaze and saw a Santa accepting a menu from the waitress. He wasn’t wearing any padding under the suit, so it hung loosely, and his beard hung around his chin, as if he’d loosened it. He looked as tired as Rachel felt.
His appearance must have shocked Anne-Marie, who had only seen fat Santas so far. There had been a lot of them. She’d seen Santas everywhere, from the men manning the Salvation Army buckets by every public building to the men standing outside malls, smoking before they went back to work.
“What’s wrong, honey?” she asked Anne-Marie.
Anne-Marie shook her head and then scrunched down, as if she didn’t want Santa to see her.
Someday, when Rachel got back on her feet, she’d get her revenge on Gil. She wasn’t sure what that revenge would be, but her husband had put the fear of God into their child.
And into her.
Or she wouldn’t be running now.
The food she had eaten rolled over in her stomach. It had taken a village to get her out of Boise. Her husband was so rich that she’d never thought she could escape him. But a forbidden phone call to her sister had changed her mind.
Helen had begged her to find a pay phone and call back. Helen had asked that before, and Rachel had refused. But this time she would listen to anything. Helen had hated Gil from the beginning and warned Rachel not to marry him. Rachel had resented that once. Later, she wondered what Helen had seen.
Still, Helen’s pushing had made her uncomfortable. It had also embarrassed Rachel. She felt so stupid. But that day she had gone past her embarrassment, past her inferiority. She was nearly dead inside. And Anne-Marie’s eyes were dying too.
So Rachel had found a pay phone near the ladies’ room in the back of a very large, very old grocery store. Rachel had felt naked making that call, standing to one side and watching the employees go by, hoping no one recognized her. She had barely been able to concentrate on her sister’s words.
Helen had told her that she knew a group of women who could help her and Anne-Marie, if she only followed instructions.
Rachel needed the help. A shelter couldn’t take her in, and she had no money of her own. Plus, Gil had more resources than any women’s organization.
But Helen had reassured her: the organization—SYT—had an incredible amount of money, and Rachel was exactly the kind of woman they could help.
The cost to Rachel? One year’s work at the organization, helping women just like her escape from whatever bad circumstance they were in. It would mean donating time and energy to a rehab project in Detroit, using old design skills that had led Rachel astray in the first place.
Once upon a time in a land faraway, she had been the best interior designer in Idaho. She had helped with projects from Boise to Sun Valley, and that was when she had met the multimillionaire charmer who would become her husband.
She should have known what a control freak he was right from the beginning. He’d had his fingers in every part of her work on that project. But she had agreed with him—his suggestions were good ones—and she hadn’t thought anything was amiss until six months after Anne-Marie’s birth, when he’d grabbed Rachel’s arm so hard during a disagreement that she’d had bruises for weeks.
She’d always thought women who stayed with men like him were doormats, so she tried to escape on her own. That’s when she discovered he had his own private army. He called them security, but they tracked every move she made and everything she did.
They had even asked her why she had used that pay phone on the way to the ladies’ room, and she had told them it was pretty simple: her cell had died.
They hadn’t double-checked. Nor did they check her purchases the next time she went shopping. She’d bought what her sister called a “burner phone” every time she shopped, and she hid them in the purses she had stacked in her closet like extra shoes.
“Mommy, can we go?” Anne-Marie asked.
Rachel nodded. She decided to stop waiting for the waitress to come back with their bill. Instead she went to the cash register and paid with cash.
The Santa was the only other person in the restaurant. He looked out the window. Then his gaze met hers through the glass. Rachel gave him an uncertain smile, mostly for Anne-Marie’s sake, and he nodded at her.
Anne-Marie grabbed her hand and held tightly.
“Let’s make sure you’re buttoned up,” Rachel said. She hated this kind of cold. It required preparation just to walk from a restaurant to the van.
But she had to get used to it. At least a year in Detroit, rehabbing, and getting her credentials back—under one of her new names.
They stepped outside and she sighed. The cold air burned her lungs. Anne-Marie nearly pulled her to the van, making her slide on the ice.
Everyone was nice here. Maybe she would stay one extra day. She wasn’t looking forward to a drive on Christmas. Most places were closed, and this arctic blast made travel so treacherous.
She would call Helen after Anne-Marie fell asleep.
They got into the van and drove the short distance back to the hotel. Luke was still at the front desk. He was watching some religious ceremony on television; it took Rachel a minute to realize it was the service from the Vatican.
She waved at him and mouthed, “I’ll be back soon,” as she and Anne-Marie headed toward the elevator.
They barely made it to the room before Anne-Marie decided she needed to get some sleep.
Rachel wished she could sleep. Ever since she’d fled Boise, she’d dozed, but never slept deeply. Every time a hotel-room heater clicked on, she bolted awake, thinking the sound was someone racking a shotgun.
Gil had threatened to kill her if she ever took Anne-Marie away from him, and she hadn’t doubted he could make good on the threat.
But Helen was convinced they could build her a new identity, and that no one would ever find her, if she did the right things. Helen had always worked with women’s groups, and this one, SYT (short for Sweet Young Things), seemed more organized and wealthier than anything Rachel had ever imagined.
They had had quite a plan for her, and she’d executed 99.9 percent of it. The hardest was leaving her Lexus SUV in the parking lot of that hotel-casino in Winnemucca and pretending that she actually had a drinking problem.
She had hidden whiskey all over her house before she left, disguised to look like tea or juice or a whole variety of things, as if she had been a secret drunk all along.
Helen had promised her that someone would take the SUV and leave it in the snow on a spur road between Winnemucca and Boise. Tracks would lead away from the SUV, and rescuers would believe that she and Anne-Marie had walked away from the car. There would be a high-profile search, and then nothing until spring, when someone might find a bit of their clothing and Rachel’s purse out in the wilderness.
Rachel thought it all a long shot, but she’d lived in the West long enough to know that families went missing there all the time. They took the wrong road, got stranded, and had n
o cell service. Rather than wait for rescue, like they were supposed to, they’d try to hike out, and generally die of exposure.
Everyone would believe the story, particularly after all that alcohol got found in the house.
Everyone, she suspected, except Gil.
But Rachel had to trust Helen. It was her only shot. Anne-Marie’s only shot. Because Gil terrorized his daughter. Mostly he wasn’t home, but when he was, just a twitch of his lips could make her turn that horrid shade of white that Rachel had seen in the restaurant.
Anne-Marie was terrified of him. As far as Rachel could tell, only because Rachel was frightened of him. To Rachel’s knowledge, he hadn’t physically hurt their daughter . . . yet.
But Rachel had known it was only a matter of time.
She sat near the television, turned so low she could barely hear it, and wished she smoked. Or actually did drink. Just to give herself something to do, something that would relax her.
She was on her own until she got to Detroit. Well, sort of on her own. The woman who had cut her hair in Cheyenne told her it got better. When Rachel asked if she was trading services, the woman had gotten very serious and nodded, finger to her lips.
There are women like us everywhere, she’d said. We’re setting up a network. I know it’s hard to trust, but you’ll be okay, if you just do what they told you.
And she had. Everything except the toys. And those she had searched over and over. She’d even stopped in a spy shop in Laramie and asked if they had one of those electronic bug-finders.
They did, and she asked if she could see how it worked. She brought in the bag of toys and the man demonstrated, finding nothing. He showed her that it did work with some demo they had, and told her that the toys were tracking-free.
She believed him. And she had seen him before Cheyenne, before her hair and appearance changed, before she dumped yet another coat, before she had done anything to make herself look like someone new.
Helen hadn’t said she had to avoid stores and things. Just warned her to be careful, and to leave her old life behind. No friends, no phone calls, no gloating e-mails to Gil.
The Best American Mystery Stories 2016 Page 27
