She started to sob in earnest then. “No,” she managed. “No, never.”
He motioned for her to come sit at one of the booths, and she came around from the counter and sank into one of the red vinyl seats. No one came from the back to see what was happening. The parking lot was empty of cars.
“I have to pull myself together,” she said. She took a napkin from the dispenser and wiped her eyes, blew her nose. She was pretty even while crying. “Who are you?”
“I’m Jones Cooper,” he said. “I’m an investigator hired by Mrs. Carr.”
The words felt like a lie, even though they were as close to the truth as possible. She seemed to accept his answer without question. He guessed he fit the part.
“It was just supposed to be for the summer,” she said. She stopped then, laced her fingers, and seemed to consider how to go on. “Cole and I were battling constantly. He was hanging out with thugs at school. I found a joint in his backpack. We were fighting every day. It was terrible. I was thinking of sending him to one of those discipline camps.”
Jones found himself watching her body language, the lacing and unlacing of her fingers, rubbing at her forehead. The inside points of her eyebrows turned up in the middle. She was stressed and sad.
“Then Cole told me he’d gotten in touch with his dad, even though we hadn’t heard from him in years. He wanted to spend the summer away. Away from me.”
“And you agreed?”
“Cole wanted to go. Kevin showed up in his shiny car and laid on the charm. Said all the right things, like how he’d been an absent father, maybe that’s why Cole was so out of hand. Maybe a summer together would straighten him out. He wanted the chance to be a better dad, for Cole to know his half brother and sister. After all, I couldn’t really afford to send him to one of those camps.”
She stopped, looked out the window. “And honestly, I was tired. Working so hard just to meet our bills, fighting every day with him. Cole is smart, wants to go to college. I had no idea how I was going to pay for that. Kevin said he’d pay. He always knew how to say what I wanted to hear. I should have known. In my heart maybe I did.”
“Known what?”
“That either you go along with Kevin when he’s being nice or he gets ugly and you go along the hard way.”
“Meaning?” But Jones had a feeling he knew exactly what she meant.
“At the end of the summer, the day Cole was supposed to come back, Kevin came alone. He said he wanted Cole to finish school in The Hollows. And if I let him do it, Kevin would pay for college.”
“I said no. I wanted my boy back. Even though it was a relief in some ways to have him gone for the summer, I missed him terribly. It was like an ache in my heart to walk past his room and see it empty.” Her eyes filled again, but she seemed stronger.
“You have kids,” she went on. “I can tell. You love them so awful, don’t you? It takes everything to raise them well, but, man, that love fills you up.”
“So true,” he said. And it was. “Did he get ugly with you when you said no?”
“Not at first,” she said. “He implied he’d come alone because Cole was so happy in The Hollows. He loved Paula and the kids; they had such a stable, loving family. He said it like he was trying not to hurt my feelings, but that’s what he was trying to do. And he did. It cut me deep. I thought about letting Cole stay. But no, that was my son. Plus, we’d been talking and e-mailing. He’d said he missed me, was ready to come back and do better at school. I knew my boy. We fought, but we always had a good relationship at the core. Lots of love.”
She told him how Kevin had seemed to accept this, left a while later, and said he’d come back with Cole tomorrow. But he didn’t. She started calling Kevin’s office, his cell phone that night, but the calls went straight to voice mail. Then strange things started to happen. First Cole’s cell phone number was disconnected. And her e-mail messages to him bounced. She figured he was avoiding her.
But then her phone was disconnected. She called from a neighbor’s house, and the phone company told her that records showed she’d called to have her service turned off; the caller had had her Social Security number and password. It would take a few days for service to be restored.
“That’s when I started to get scared,” she said. “I got in my car to drive to The Hollows. I was going to get my son back. I had legal custody, and I would fight for my boy. I remembered what Kevin was, why I’d left him. He was cold. Cold at his center. I mean, he doesn’t feel. People don’t change. How could I have forgotten?”
“We always want to think the best of people,” said Jones. “It’s normal.”
But she didn’t seem to hear him. Her face was pale with anxiety, her words rushing out as though she’d been holding them all back for too long.
“Next my car wouldn’t start. When the mechanic came out to tow it, he told me that the motherboard, the main electrical component that controlled the car, had been fried and that it would take days and thousands of dollars to fix.”
She shook her head as though she were still incredulous about it.
“I was in a state of pure panic. For three days I had to call in sick to work.”
Jones thought of what he already knew about Robin O’Conner. “So you lost your job.”
He thought she would start to cry again. But she didn’t. “I’d already missed so much time because of my problems with Cole. I was on thin ice. I think Kevin knew that. I think I’d even told him.”
“So there you were with no job, no phone, no car.”
“My credit cards were already close to the limit. I didn’t have much money saved. I’ve never been good with finances, you know? I’ve been living paycheck to paycheck for as long as I can remember.”
So many people were on the edge like this; it just took a single push to send someone’s life into free fall.
“I knew I wasn’t going to be able to make my rent that month. I’d already missed payments over the last couple of years. The management company said they wouldn’t make any more allowances.”
“So… what? You left your apartment and came here?”
He looked out the window at the motel, then at the woman sitting across from him. She was a good mother, a hard worker-at least that’s how she seemed to Jones, just as the motel owner had said. He didn’t like to see it. Jones, same as everyone, wanted to believe that people who fell on hard times deserved it, had made mistakes that led them to a place like the Regal Motel.
“Kevin came to see me. Just when I was at my lowest. Just when I was about to get a ride from a friend and make a scene at his house, call the police.”
“Why wasn’t that the first thing you did?”
“What-call the police? Make a scene?”
“Yeah.”
She looked at him as if he were a moron. “Because of Cole. I didn’t want him to see me freaking out like that. He chose his dad.”
“Or so Kevin said.”
She blinked at him, then looked down at the tabletop. It was clean-spotless, in fact-as though it had just been wiped.
“He asked how I could take care of Cole now with no job and no car. Didn’t I want to see him with a good family, living in a nice house? Didn’t I want to see him go to school? I did. I do want those things for Cole.”
“So you just let Cole go? Even though you had every reason to believe that Kevin had your phone turned off, destroyed your car?”
She didn’t say anything. But she straightened up a bit, turned her dark eyes on him.
“Listen,” she said. “I don’t have anyone. My mom is in a nursing home in Florida; I haven’t been able to afford to see her in over a year. She was a single mother, had nothing to give me but love and encouragement. That didn’t get me into college. If I’d had the money for an education, I might not have spent the rest of my life drifting from one stupid job to another. I wanted Cole to have better than this. He’s smart, way smarter than I am. He deserves a leg up.”