The Edge of Nowhere by Elizabeth George Page B

would look like, or whether she was supposed to ask for it herself.
    Debbie was studying her with the sort of look mothers direct to their children. She said, “You don’t have a place to stay, huh? Couch surfing, are you? You run away from home?”
    Becca’s fingers went for the AUD box at this, and she turned it off. If there were going to be whispers, she needed to know what they were.
    . . . Come on now, girl . . .
    Becca could feel how important her answer was going to be. She could sense Debbie’s need for truth. But she couldn’t tell Debbie the full truth, so she told a form of it, which was the best she could do.
    “I’m meeting my mom here,” Becca said. “She dropped me off, but she’ll be back later.”
    “Today?”
    “I don’t know exactly when . . . I’m just supposed to wait for her.”
    Having said this, Becca did wait, although what she waited for was Debbie’s reaction. She added, “I guess I’m looking for a place to stay,” she added. “Till she gets here.”
    “How old are you, darlin’?” Debbie asked her.
    Becca thought about lying, but rejected the idea. “I’ll be fifteen in February.”
    “And your mom just dropped you in the middle of Langley?”
    “Just to wait,” Becca said. “She’ll be back.”
    “Fourteen years old?”
    “Almost fifteen,” Becca said.
    Debbie looked long and hard at her, but her face was altering. It was softening for some reason and she said, “Almost fifteen years old.” She put the SUV into gear and added in a contemplative voice, “Well, how about that.”
    Becca didn’t know what Debbie meant, but the way she looked at it, she would probably find out.

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    SIX
    D ebbie drove them to the edge of town, to an old motel called the Cliff that Becca had actually passed without noticing on her way into Langley earlier that morning. It wasn’t much to look at, just a string of ten rooms with old-fashioned rusty metal porch chairs in front of them and dismal flowerbeds, most of them empty. The front of the motel was planted with Japanese maples, though, and these added lovely color to the place.
    At first Becca thought that Debbie had driven her here to help her get a motel room. This worried her because while she had the money to pay for a motel room, she didn’t have the money to pay for it very long. But then Debbie said, “This is where I live,” and Becca altered her thinking to consider that Debbie was one of those poor people who had to live in motels because they’d lost every possession they had. But then Debbie got out of the SUV and led her toward the motel office, the only part of the business that had a second floor. She walked directly through the office and into the living room of an apartment behind it.
    The old furniture inside reminded Becca of her great-grandmother’s house. It was that unappealing early-American style, done in maple with tufted cushions. These were leaking stuffing at some of their seams. There was a coffee table in front of a sofa, littered with copies of National Geographic and Travel +Leisure that gaped open and had pages torn from them. Some of these pages were on the floor, and others had been used to make collages. These hung on the walls as decoration along with pictures of children and adults. Members of Debbie’s family, Becca reasoned.
    As Debbie continued into a kitchen, Becca said, “Are these your kids?”
    Debbie said, “Kids and grandkids,” over her shoulder, and she added, “I’m starving. Let’s have something to eat before I have to pick up the Indians.”
    In the kitchen, Debbie took hot dogs from a refrigerator and dumped them into a pan of water on the stove. She took buns and opened them into a baking pan and slapped this onto the stovetop as well. She lit another cigarette, took a hit off it, and coughed. Her cough was deep and chesty.
    As the water heated, Debbie said to her, “You can stay here and wait for your mom.”
    Becca said, “Gosh. That’s . . . I