Читать книгу The Good Daughter: A gripping, suspenseful, page-turning thriller - Alexandra Burt - Страница 12

Dahlia

In the Barrington Hotel parking lot, I take one last look in the rearview mirror; the bruises around my nose are still noticeable but the swelling has completely subsided. I run my tongue over my chipped front tooth. The flaw is barely visible but the tip of my tongue is tender from persistently running over the sharp edge. I’m part of a crew of women who clean the guest rooms. We have been hired on probation and get paid under the table. We go unnoticed—we are actually told to never make eye contact nor speak to the guests—yet we are held to the same standards as the room attendants in their black uniforms with white aprons. They are a step up from us; they help unpack, assist with anything the guest might need, they don’t scrub toilets or change sheets. I get out of the car, fluff my bangs, and check my likeness in the window; my baby blue housekeeper’s uniform is starched, pressed, and fits me impeccably, just as management demands. There are no allowances for stains, wrinkles, and snug skirts or fabric pulling against buttons. At the Barrington, even my crew of undocumented help isn’t allowed to slack off.

Every single time my sore tongue touches the tooth’s jagged edge, I’m reminded how long it’s been since I found Jane in the woods. Seven days—an entire week—and not a word about her identity; she remains in a coma and her name is still a mystery. Watching the local news, I’m taken aback by the absence of appeals to the public and the overall lack of urgency. I am able to abandon the image of Jane in her hospital bed, attached to monitors, but I can’t forget what happened to me in her room.

Since the day I saw Jane last, I have had another episode. I have decided on the word episode until I figure out a more appropriate word.

It happened earlier this morning, in the shower: the calcified showerhead’s water pressure was mediocre at best, yet I felt my hands tingling, starting at the tips. The prickling traveled up my arm, past my neck, into my eyes and nose. I didn’t only feel the water pounding on my body but I smelled the minerals, tasted them like miniature Pop Rocks exploding on my tongue. Every single drop thumped against the wall of the shower stall—individually and all at once—as if the world was magnified while simultaneously zooming in on me, allowing itself to be interpreted. I dropped on the shower floor before my knees could buckle on me. It was over as quickly as it had started. I was left with an anticipatory feeling, a nervous kind of energy that tingled through me like electrical sparks as if I was positioning myself on the blocks to prepare for a race. I remained on the shower floor for a long while, only getting up when I realized I was going to be late for work.

Housekeepers are forbidden to enter through the front door but I’m late. If I hurry and my supervisor, Mr. Pratt, doesn’t catch me between the door and the lockers, I can clock in without a lecture.

The revolving mechanism makes a gentle sswwsshh and Pratt lies in wait behind a marble column, motioning me to approach him, curling his index finger as if he has caught a kid with muddy shoes trampling through the house.

I follow him to his office. He does not offer me a seat and the lecture is short. “We have to let you go,” he says, and within the same breath, he assures me of the Barrington’s empathy for what I have been going through after finding Jane in the woods. “But you’ve been consistently late and you are unable to complete your assigned duties. We only pick the best for our full-time positions, you were informed about that policy. I will escort you to clear out your belongings.”

Later, as Pratt watches me from the door of the locker room, I dump the few accumulated belongings—a change of clothes and a brush, and granola bars—in my purse. I hesitate when I see the stuffed giraffe at the bottom of the locker that I failed to take to lost and found days ago. One of its eyes dangles on a thread, and I attempt to stuff it back in its socket.

“Your last check will be mailed to you. I was hoping to offer you a full-time position, but we do probationary part-time for a reason. Sorry it didn’t work out.”

I always knew it wasn’t going to work out. A full-time position includes paperwork, forms I don’t have. For as long as I can remember, less than eight hundred a month—the cut-off for tax-exempt wages—has always been the magic number.

I leave the Barrington through the back door. When I reach my car, I steady myself, lean against it. As I drop the giraffe in the nearest garbage can, a memory hits me: my mother waking me in the middle of the night, thrusting a stuffed animal into my arms: a lavender bunny. Another one of her cloak-and dagger operations, leaving everything behind—grab the papers, anything with our name on it—and off we went to a town unknown, unaccustomed rooms and a bed unfamiliar to me. There aren’t too many memories but this one is clear as day. I wonder what happened to the lavender bunny.

Above me, moths’ wings make contact with the streetlight.

I bend backward, looking up; the moths swirl around like snowflakes. Hundreds of them spin aimlessly in the harsh whiteness of the LED light.

Snow. A blizzard. That too is a memory I can’t place.