Chapter Thirty-Nine
Nathan
If I was distracted, it was easy to mistake the motel room for any of the dozens we’d stayed in before. Some motel rooms had details that stood out: the fishing-themed room with glass buoy light fixtures; black & white photographs of the frontier town we were in instead of a generic abstract art; and a painted mural that directly represented the view from better rooms.
I struggled to remember why stamps of small animals paraded around the border of our current room. They had a primitive style that made me think of cave paintings.
“Could be a kid’s nursery,” Bree had said when we stepped inside.
Her comment made me think of the little girl, Maggie, and I was too distracted to remember where we were.
I traced our long days on the highway all the way from the little honeymoon motel room where we’d changed our course. That was one room I would never forget. We’d become the Cramers there, our real selves, no longer fugitives.
The news had declared us dead.
For a moment, I wondered if hell was a cheap motel room. Then I rubbed my eyes hard and forced myself to remember.
The Zuni Indian Reservation. Our motel was a little roadside shack on the highway just outside the reservation border. The animal stamps were actually Zuni fetishes.
I knew because before we checked in, an older woman had cornered Bree and I in the parking lot and convinced us both to buy a hand-carved fetish. Bree had chosen a small, white bear, and I bought it for her.
“I’m good,” I had tried to tell the older woman. “I wouldn’t want to lose it.”
She pressed a glossy yellow figure into my hand. “The mountain lion ensures a successful hunt.”
Bree had overheard the older woman’s words and insisted that I buy it. “We could use all the support we can get,” Bree had reminded me.
I wondered where the little trinket had gotten to, and then I saw it. The mountain lion had a strange habit of turning up as soon as I thought about it. From the bed, I could see it perched on top of the motel room’s ancient TV. I narrowed my eyes and studied it.
The older woman had assured me it was an excellent fetish, one that helped with intuition and resourcefulness. I wasn’t sure what the little carved animal could do, but I had to admit I needed everything it was said to represent.
Bree sighed in her sleep, and I forced my eyes closed again. I couldn’t sleep after I remembered where we were.
I turned over and faced the battered postcard again. Maggie’s photograph was tucked behind it, and I had to fight the urge not to pull it out and study it again. It was such a stark photograph, not one normally taken of a child. There were no defining marks on the wall behind the small girl, no clues in the flooring or in her guarded expression. I wished again for a reflection, a glimpse of something that would tell me I was on the right track, but there was nothing there.
That I could see. No matter how many times I looked at it, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was missing something.
I plucked the photograph up again and turned onto my back. Why did I have this picture? And why was the little girl’s name scribbled in my handwriting across the back?
I tried to be quiet. Bree had woken up and found me like this too many times before. She had threatened to make me take sleeping pills. I lay still and looked over the photograph until the edges started to blur and my eyes drifted closed.
I didn’t need to have my eyes open to see every detail of the photograph.
Sleep took over for a few seconds before my eyes popped open again. We’d heard a little more about Maggie’s story on the news, but it had only made me more confused.
The case stated that Maggie had disappeared from the San Diego Zoo. The big crowds, the exhibitions, and distractions, it was not hard to imagine how Maggie had gone missing from such a big venue. Still, there were a lot of details about her case that did not make any sense.
I wondered if we should head to San Diego. Not that I had the first idea how to find clues or pick up the trail her kidnappers left behind. It was just that I felt a pull. Like I felt a pull to look at her photograph again and again.
There was something I was missing, beyond my shattered memory, and it occurred to me it might be in San Diego.
Bree shifted in the motel bed and laid one arm across my chest. I tucked the photograph away before she caught me worrying over it, but she didn’t wake up. Bree sighed, and I watched a small smile play over her sleepy lips.
What would Bree say if I told her we were heading to San Diego instead of El Paso?
I pulled her closer into my arms and dropped a kiss on her soft hair. Bree didn’t deserve any of this. Not only had she gone on the run with me, but she’d agreed to fake her own death. Then she had turned around and let all our new plans go in order to help me follow the cold trail of what happened to Maggie.
There was no way I could wake her up with the news of another wild goose chase.
Bree wrapped her arm tighter around me and her warmth began to seep into my body. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine what it would be like when everything was over.
How would I tell Bree I loved her?
Finally, my mind caught on a pleasant thought and my eyes drifted shut. I felt myself start to fall asleep, and then the dream came.
The only reason my dreaming mind recognized the landscape was the giant sign: San Diego Zoo. Bree and I passed underneath it, hand in hand. We wandered through the exhibits but couldn’t see any animals. It seemed to be past sunset, the dream sky a strange pinkish-orange. There was no one else around.
“What are you looking for?” Bree asked me in the dream.
I couldn’t answer her; my mouth stopped up with sleep. Then I felt the pull. We walked through all the empty exhibits until we came to the mountain lions.
They roamed a large enclosure, their piercing eyes on me. Bree and I watched them quietly until the dream turned sinister.
Zoo employees cornered us, convinced that I had stolen a lion. I argued she was a free animal, not meant to be stuck in a cage, and they couldn’t take advantage of her anymore.
The dream closed in tight, the zoo employees ringing around us with the tasers and restraints they used on the big cats.
“Maggie, no!” I cried out.
One lion, the one I had called Maggie, leaped from the enclosure and defended us.
I reached out, tried to hold her back but the dream kept my hands tied. Bree and I watched as Maggie chased off all the zoo employees. She turned back into a little girl as she walked back to us, a smile on her face. There was a sprinkle of blood on her cheek.
“Let’s go home,” I told her.
Maggie shook her head. No matter what I said, she wouldn’t come with us. The little girl in the dream was determined; she had something important to do. She refused to even think about going home until it was done.
“It’s okay,” Maggie told me in the dream. “When I’m done, they say I’ll get ice cream. I like ice cream. It reminds me of home.”
I wanted to tear the dream apart with my bare hands, but I was powerless. Maggie morphed back into a lion and slunk into the enclosure. She didn’t look back.
My mind screamed at my subconscious that I had to go get her, I had to save her. If there was only one thing I did before I was destroyed, it would be to get the little girl back to her mother. The dream wouldn’t change, and I woke myself up sweating with my futile effort.
It took a minute for my mind to return to the motel room. Then I had to stare at the animal-stamped border and remember where we were. It came back in a painful flash.
I sat up and was face to face with the little Zuni fetish. The mountain lion looked at me from its perch on the motel room TV, and I swear it moved. I pressed both hands to my eyes but the dream had faded.
If there had been any clues in the dream, they were gone now.
The hot hiss of water came from the motel bathroom. Bree had slipped out of bed while I slept and was now garbling some song from the radio while she showered. My body longed to join her, but I was a wild-eyed, sweaty mess. She deserved her few moments of peace.
I flopped back on the bed and wondered if I would ever find peace again. I knew I’d had had that dream before. Minus the zoo, it had felt so familiar, so true. I groaned with frustration and fought the itchy bed covers. Sleep didn’t even give me a break from the crushing sense I should be doing more.
All I could do was drag myself to the edge of the bed and sit with my head in my hands until Bree came out. She was the only thing that eased the pressure in my brain. It pounded but nothing more came back to me.
When would my mind work again? When would I remember?