* * *
In the morning, she hobbled stiffly to a small coffee shop, where she used the bathroom. Her reflection in the mirror was a shock, not only because of the brown, unwashed hair but also the dark circles below her eyes and the tight, sickly white skin stretched across her cheekbones.
In the café, she drank a carton of juice and ate half a bite of Ingrid’s oatmeal cookie before her stomach let her know it was a mistake. She was so exhausted after a sleepless night that the people milling around her in the café seemed like figures in a dream. At a table by the window, she spotted a man reading The New York Times, and wondered if there was a story about her in the paper. The Times had covered the murder, of course. Would it also cover her suicide? The man glanced in her direction, and she let a few strands of her hair fall over her cheek like a veil.
* * *
Back in the motel, the same man as the night before sat on the stool behind the counter and he said he’d have a room ready for her by noon. She cried, she was so relieved. One-twenty a week, he told her. She had no idea if that was a good price for this dumpy old place or not. She’d never been on her own before. She’d traveled more than most kids her age. All the concerts. All the festivals. But some adult—her parents or Steven or Caterina—had always taken care of everything and all she’d needed to do was show up and play her twenty-thousand-dollar violin. She knew now, as she waited for her room on a hard plastic chair in the lobby, with its grimy floor and stained walls, that she’d been spoiled.
Sitting there, she clamped her suitcase between her knees, knowing she was perilously close to drifting off to sleep. At noon, the man gave her a key and she walked outside, up the stairs and down a long exterior walkway to a room that was no bigger than the prison cell she belonged in. Although it was daylight and the sun shone through the filmy glass of the window, two roaches marched across the floor in full view. Jade barely took note of them. All she saw was a bed that looked like it had clean sheets beneath a thin green blanket. She locked the door, pulled the curtains closed, and fell onto the bed to sleep away this horrible new reality that had become her life.
* * *
She didn’t fully wake up until noon the following day. She’d gotten up a few times, awakened by laughter or shouting or, on one frightening occasion, pounding on her door, but other than that and a couple of breaks to use the filthy toilet in the bathroom, she slept. When she opened her drapes that second day, a man was peering straight into her room, his craggy face pressed against her grimy window. She screamed and whipped the drapes closed again. She didn’t dare go out there. The night she spent on the beach seemed like ages ago. Like someone else’s life. She’d been very lucky she’d made it through that night safely and had lost none of her precious cash.
Sitting on the bed in the dim light, she nibbled the remaining third of that woman Ingrid’s cookie, wondering how she would get more food, even though she still had no appetite. But she needed to eat to survive. She felt so weak and trembly, she wasn’t sure she could make it down the motel steps to the street. I could die in this room, she thought. But she couldn’t go outside with that creepy man out there. She crawled under the covers again. When she closed her eyes, all she could see was the image of her mother rocking Riley to sleep in her arms. Riley had on her pink-footed pajamas and Jade imagined the scent of baby shampoo and her mother’s hand lotion. If only she could erase the past few months and be back with her family! She fell asleep, longing to touch them.
The next morning, she awakened to a knock on the door. She stared at the door from the bed. The sun peeked into the room through the gap between the door and the door frame. It was the only way to know day from night in the room. The knocking came again.
“Jade?” a woman’s voice asked. “It’s Ingrid, honey. Please open the door.”
Jade hesitated a moment, sitting up in the bed, thinking, It’s a trap. Don’t open it. Don’t open it. But her need for kindness, for a grown-up to take over her life and put it in some kind of order, was too strong and she slowly moved the covers aside.
“I’m coming,” she said, her voice a croak as she got out of the bed. She could smell her filthy hair as she moved across the room, and she was still in the clothes she’d been wearing since getting off the train. Lisa would never have let herself fall apart like this. But Lisa was dead and gone.
She cracked open the door, blinking against the sunlight, and got her first real look at Ingrid. She wore loose white pants, a loose white flowy top, and green flip-flops. A very, very long braid hung over her left shoulder, and the color of her hair was a dull mixture of beige and brown and gray. Her eyes were as blue as Jade’s, but Ingrid’s stood out because of her tan. Crinkly lines fanned out from her eyes, and her neck had a leathery look, but she wasn’t very old. Maybe in her early forties. Jade’s mother’s age.
Ingrid smiled. “Do you remember me from the other night on the beach?” she asked.
Jade nodded.
“I asked around and someone told me they thought you got a room here. But I don’t think you really belong here, do you?”
Jade wasn’t sure what she was asking, but no. She didn’t belong here. She shook her head.
“I don’t live too far from here,” Ingrid said, “and I have a little cottage I rent out. My tenant moved out last week and I can let you have it for a little more than what you’re probably paying here. Would you like that?”
Could she trust her? Had Ingrid called the police about her? Jade’s brain was too foggy to think it through. She remembered the screaming and shouting outside her room during the night hours. The old man’s craggy face pressed against her window. She nodded. “Yes,” she said.
“Then pack up your things and let’s go.”
* * *
They had to walk. Ingrid explained that she had no car and didn’t need one in Ocean Beach, where everything was at her fingertips. She rolled Jade’s small suitcase for her, saying nothing about how light it was when she took it from her hands. Jade wanted to ask how far it was to her house—she wasn’t sure she could walk more than a block, she felt so weak and sick. Her stomach was concave and her muscles so slack that it was difficult to hold herself upright as they walked. But it was wrong to ask. Wrong to complain about anything at all when this woman was being so nice to her.
“Look at you, in that heavy jacket and hat,” Ingrid said as they walked. “You must have come from someplace cold?”
“Maryland,” Jade said, trying out the lie. Ann Johnson was from Bethesda, Maryland. At first she’d thought it was stupid that her documents made it look like she was from Maryland when that was only one state over from Virginia, but her father said it would be easiest for her. Growing up in Virginia, she knew a lot about Maryland. If anyone asked her about it, she could sound like she’d actually grown up there.
“Well, you can burn those winter clothes,” Ingrid said cheerfully. “You’re a California girl now.”
They walked a few blocks in silence, the shops and palm trees and people a blur, and Jade was breathing hard through her mouth by the time Ingrid pointed to a low wooden bungalow. It was tiny and looked old, like all the other houses on the street, but it was painted a deep turquoise, and purple flowers grew on vines all over the front yard. It looked like a real home. It looked like more than Jade felt she deserved.
She followed Ingrid up the cracked sidewalk to the front door of the bungalow. Ingrid opened the unlocked door and ushered her inside. They were in a small living room dominated by a green tiled fireplace and a huge, fat-cushioned brown couch. Jade could see three doorways from where she stood, all of them arched. “This is my house,” Ingrid said. “Your little cottage is out back.” Jade felt Ingrid scrutinizing her face and wished she could hide behind more than her filthy hair. Was Ingrid comparing her face to one she’d seen on TV that morning? She thought of the photographs of her that had made the news since Steven’s death. In nearly every one, she was holding Violet. Her father had been right not to let her bring the violin with her.
“I’ve never been farther east than Iowa, where I’m from,” Ingrid said. She stood in the arched doorway between the living room and a yellow kitchen. “But I’ve been out here since I was eighteen. Your age,” she continued. “As soon as I graduated, I hightailed it out of town.” She laughed and Jade tried to smile. “I didn’t regret it for an instant,” Ingrid said. “I had some friends in San Diego, though. How about you? Do you know someone here?”
She shook her head. “I wanted a fresh start,” she managed to say. “Just … really fresh.”
“And you look like you could use one,” Ingrid said. “Utterly exhausted, aren’t you. Come on. Let me show you your new home.” She reached for the suitcase, but this time Jade grabbed the handle herself.
“I’ve got it,” she said.
She followed Ingrid through a tiny yellow kitchen and out the arched back door. They were in a small yard, where a minuscule turquoise cottage sat in a tangle of vines and pink flowers, looking like something out of a fairy tale.
“So this is your little abode.” Ingrid motioned to the cottage. “You can pick your own oranges for your morning juice.” She pointed to a couple of trees in the middle of the yard. “The man at the motel said you were paying one-twenty a week, so this will be one-thirty. Will you be able to manage that?”