Page 20 of York

I needed him to love her.

Because then he would help us.

So far, so good.

“Yeah?”

“I like your friend.”

“I like him too, munchkin.”

CHAPTER SIX

York

“Oh, absolutely-fucking-not,” I said as I clicked through the pictures on my laptop at the kitchen table later that night.

Eddie was at the stove, mixing taco spices into the ground beef. Mackie was perched on the door of his cage, flapping his wings to draw attention to himself so someone would slip him a treat. Velle was standing a few feet away, looking up from his phone at my exclamation.

“What’s up?” he asked, tucking his phone away.

Not sure what the hell to do with myself once I got home from the zoo, I’d gone on my laptop to research, well, five-year-olds. What they were like developmentally, what things they might be into, how to parent one.

But after a while, both Runa and Denali’s words came back to me. About the motel.

I mean, there were some perfectly reasonable motels in Florida. Ones that might not have been the nicest places to stay, but were clean and safe enough.

But the green pool stuck in my head.

Sure, pools could be weird. I knew that from having to help maintain the one at the club. Sometimes, too many people or spilled drinks in the water, or a lot of rain, could fuck with the chemical balance of the pool and make it go cloudy or green. So it could have been a fluke.

I just couldn’t stop myself from looking into motels in the area with pools. It took a while, but I finally came across one that had a sign with an alligator, like Denali had said.

Then I clicked on the pictures.

And saw the reviews.

They weren’t staying at one of the decent motels. Oh, no. They seemed to be staying at the cheapest one. The cheapest one that didn’t have the keyword ‘bedbugs’ in the reviews, at least.

My mind traveled right back to the car. Runa’s beat-up shoes. How she’d packed lunch. The tension in her face in the gift shop.

Money wasn’t just tight.

There might not be enough to function normally.

I’d meant to get answers from Runa at the zoo. About where they’d been. About what had been going on. I’d just gotten so distracted by having a daughter and getting to spend time with and get to know her that I’d let all that other shit go.

Clearly, it needed to move up on my priority list, though.

“This is where they’re staying,” I told Velle, turning the screen so he could see.

While his face did tighten like I expected, he sighed and said in a reasonable voice, “It’s probably all Runa can afford.”

“And that’s a problem.”

And partially my fault. I didn’t know a lot about kids, but I knew they weren’t cheap. They were constantly growing out of their clothes. And all that growing probably meant a lot of food. That wasn’t factoring in things like medical care, toys, experiences.

If I’d been paying child support this whole time, things would have been easier. Or if I’d been accessible to them, so they could move down here and let me take care of them.