I took a breath. If Rose’s behavior had proved one thing, it was that it was easier to give my father the daughter he wanted. That daughter pulled her hand away. That daughter followed him outside.
The Mustang. The Teeter-Totter. The Frog Pond. Those were just a few of the bars where we stopped so my father could inquire if anyone had seen them. But no one had. At each place, I waited in the car with my mother, listening to the rain pound on the roof. At last, after one in the morning, she suggested we call it quits.
“You want to stop?” my father said.
“It’s not that I want to, Sylvester. But I don’t know what more we can do at the moment. It’s apparent we aren’t going to find her out here tonight.”
“Maybe they headed back to Howie’s apartment in Tampa? It’s only a hundred miles away. They could be there by now.”
“It’s a possibility. But even so, I don’t think we should drive there without knowing for sure. Better we go back to the hotel and call first. At the very least, we can leave a message telling her to let us know where she is so we can come get her.”
Reluctantly, my father turned the car around while my mother continued staring out that window. “I suppose you’re right,” he said once we were headed in the opposite direction. “We don’t have much choice, do we?”
Back at the hotel, the three of us climbed the stairs to the second floor, a weary silence all around. The moment my father snapped on the light in our room, we saw Rose curled beneath the covers in one of the beds. She lifted her head from the pillow. “Hey.”
“Hey?” my father said.
“Where were you?” my mother asked.
“Uncle Howie took me to—”
“You know what?” my father shouted. “Never mind. How did you get in here?”
“The lady at the front desk gave me a key.” Rose yawned, messed with her hair. “She’s one of those too-tan Florida freaks. I took one look at her wallet face and—”
“Let’s go!” my father shouted, charging toward the bed. He ripped back the covers and yanked Rose by the arm, lifting her up and off from the mattress. “Let’s go! Let’s go!”
“Ow! Go where?”
“Don’t ask! Just do what I say for a change! Now!”
My sister still had on her T-shirt and jeans from earlier, though her sneakers were off. While my father kept squeezing her arm, she made an effort to get her balance and slip her feet into them. All the while, Rose looked to my mother and me. The defiant expression she wore when slamming the truck door earlier gave way to something frightened. Normally, I knew my mother would have made some effort to calm the situation, but after the way Rose had behaved at the convention center, she just turned away, walked to her suitcase, and pulled out her nightgown. My sister barely managed to get her feet into her sneakers before my father began jerking her toward the door. Rose stumbled as she stared back at me. My mouth opened to say something that might stop it, but what words would he listen to? In the end, I just stood there, mute as that girl who emerged from the bushes.
Once they were gone, the room filled with a heavy silence. My mother walked to the window, not to stare outside, but to adjust the curtains. There wasn’t enough fabric to cover the glass, so she had to choose where the light would come in the next morning: down the middle or at the sides. I watched her sample both before choosing the middle. After that, she told me I might as well get ready for bed too.
When she stepped into the bathroom and shut the door, I listened to the faucet handles squeak, the water run. The hard, cinnamon-colored suitcase I shared with Rose lay open on the floor across the room. I had every intention of doing as my mother said, but stopped to look out the window. Through the gap in the curtains, I could see fat moths doing a sloppy flutter beneath a light, but no trace of my sister and father.
At last, my mother emerged from the bathroom. She wore a knee-length white nightgown, her feet bare so she must have forgotten her slippers back in Dundalk. Since she was never the type to walk around the house in sleeping clothes, I rarely saw her this way. Unpinned, her hair fell past her shoulders, revealing more silvery streaks than were apparent in her bun. That hair, that gown, that pale skin, made her look ghostly—a vision worthy of those slides on the screen at the convention center.
“It’s been a long day, Sylvie, and an even longer evening. We need our sleep. Now come away from the window and get ready for bed.”
I stared outside again at those moths around the light. “Where did Dad take her?”
“I’m sure he just wanted to talk with Rose about what she did.”
“Why outside?”
“Well, since it was not going to be the quietest of conversations, it only makes sense to have it someplace where they won’t wake the other guests in this hotel.”