“What time?” Deborah says. She thinks of the last time she saw Georgia, three years ago. The scabs on her cheeks. Her bleeding, bitten-down nails.
“I would get into Scranton at seven.”
“I’ll be there to pick you up. You need anything? You sure you’re not in trouble?” She thinks of Georgia at fifteen, the DUI, the stolen truck. Thinking it was a good idea to let her spend the night in jail. The next morning, the look on her daughter’s face: the betrayal, the rage, the fear. Deborah knew she had made a terrible mistake. But she was a single mother trying to raise a daughter the only way she knew how. Never as straightforward as planting seeds, coaxing fruit from the garden. There was a whole alchemy of love and discipline that she must not have gotten right.
“I’m okay. I’ll be okay. I just need to get out of town.”
“Are you still with Josh? He hit you again?”
“No, not Josh. I’ve just got a bad feeling.” She wonders if her daughter isn’t alone. If she’s afraid to say what she is afraid of.
“Will you be safe, until you can get on a bus?”
A pause. “I’ll see you tomorrow, seven o’clock.” Deborah doesn’t know a lot of things about her daughter’s life. But she can tell when she’s scared. The small voice in the hallway. The sound of feet in footed pajamas padding down the stairs.
“I’ll pick you up. Tonight. Tell me where.”
“No, Ma, the bus is fine. That’s too long to drive.”
“At least tell me where to call you.”
“The Sunset Motel.”
“That’s where you’re staying tonight?”
“No, but you can leave a message for me there. Tell them it’s for Peaches.”
She doesn’t want to know what this means, that her daughter is going by another name. Georgia, Peaches. It would be a little funny, if it didn’t make her worry more. Despite herself, she can already hear the innuendo:Have a taste. Shake my tree. A shiver works its way up her spine.
DEBORAH DOESN’Tsleep that night. Around 3 a.m., she heaves herself out of bed, goes to the kitchen for tea, tries to read. Her jam is lined up on the counter, the mess of the afternoon long since tidied away. When the first light comes into the kitchen, it makes the jars glow, a pinky red. The sight used to be comforting, but today it is unsettling. Maybe it’s her sleepless brain, but she can only look at the jam and see blood. She thinks of her daughter coming home four, four and a half years ago after a night out with Josh, her lip split.
She keeps looking at herself in the rearview on the drive to Scranton. The lipstick perks up her face, but not enough to make up for the circles under her eyes. She’s early. She watches the clock on the dash. 6:03. 6:27. 6:44. 6:58. 7:05.
The Atlantic City bus pulls in, hisses, sighs out a trickle of passengers. She waits to see her daughter among them, squints hard at a brunette girl—Georgia might have changed her hair—but no. None of them is her daughter. She waits until the driver is done heaving suitcases from the guts of the bus, slides Gee’s picture from her wallet.
“Was this girl on your bus?”
The driver hardly glances at the photo, shakes her head no. All the passengers already gone, she says.
“No one in the bathroom?” She has a memory of walking in on Georgia taking a photo of herself in the bathroom mirror with her first cell phone. She had drawn a lipstick heart on her cheek, on each of her breasts, around the nipple. Who was it for? Deborah wanted to know. For a man online? To text to a boy? Or just for herself? She hoped it was the latter, just a celebration of being beautiful, of being young, a private, exuberant joy.
At half past seven, she walks up to the ticket window, taps on the glass. “Any other buses coming in from Atlantic City tonight?”
The woman shakes her head, pulls a sliver of onion from her burger, coils it onto the paper wrapper, licks a spot of ketchup from her thumb. Deborah fumbles her phone out of her bag and dials the number for the motel Georgia told her about. It rings and rings and rings, but no one picks up.
Deborah sits in the parking lot until after midnight, thinking of the sound of her daughter’s voice on the phone, the light coming through the jars of jam. At 12:03, she turns the engine on. It’s a three-hour drive to Atlantic City. She hasn’t been there since a trip she took with a few other schoolteachers, back in ’99. She was shocked at the dinginess of it back then. It can only be worse now. She’s seen stories on the news: the opioid epidemic, the casinos shutting down, the gang violence, Hurricane Sandy battering the coast. It’s a wonder there’s anything left.
She stops for a coffee, even though she doesn’t need it. Her body is humming with purpose; her heart feels like it’s gotten loose, untethered, tumbling around in her chest. She’ll bring her girl back. This time, Georgia will come home.
CLARA
AFTER I GOT HOME FROMthe beach, I slept soundly for the first night in a long time. I woke up with sunlight bright at the edges of my blinds, and as I opened my eyes I could hear the pushcart men on the boardwalk callingride ride ride. Seagulls screeched, the waves thumped against the shore. But otherwise, silence. No screaming babies. No visions of strange rooms. There was a new clarity and stillness to everything around me. I felt like I could breathe again.
I knew Lily was right, even before we got into trouble with those men. My life had to change. I had $630 saved. It might have to be enough. Enough to get to California, at least, and figure things out from there. But now when I thought about leaving, for the first time I couldn’t picture doing it. Not until I found Peaches. Until I learned what she knew, and maybe, maybe, figured out what these visions meant. It seemed wrong, unfair to all of the women, to take off like they didn’t matter. Like I wasn’t carrying around pieces of their lives.
I got dressed and slung Victoria’s purse over my shoulder. Des wasn’t home—another one of her nights out that bled into morning. I was worried about her, too, but also relieved. I didn’t know what was going on with the rent, but with her gone I wouldn’t have to deal with meeting anyone else in the back room.
Outside, the heat had finally broken, which created a lulling sense of calm that I almost let myself believe in. The ocean looked glassy and smooth. But I remembered the bloodstained knife in my purse, and the way Lily had thought she saw someone on the beach when we swam. I looked down at my fingers. The saltwater seemed to have helped the infection, but I wondered if they would scar. If I would walk around with a reminder of that man’s anger for the rest of my life.
