The grease pencil on the office whiteboard had worn to a blunt wedge.
Mara Vale wiped condensation from the desk glass, listening to the drip from the metal awning. It was seven in the morning. Outside, the gravel apron of the Candlewake Motel lay under cold mist smelling of wet asphalt and creek mud. One day had passed since they buried Ada Bell behind the pump shed. The raw earth was shielded by corrugated iron from stray dogs and the freezing wind.
Behind the counter, the brass register lay open in its oak cradle. Mara did not touch the heavy plate on the binding; her fingers still smelled of kerosene from filling the hall lamps. Instead, she looked across the counter at Naomi Chen.
Naomi had pulled a folding stool from Room 02 and sat before the key rack. She wore a corduroy jacket, two wool scarves knotted over her throat, and held an accounting pad flat across her knees. She had worked as a library assistant before the roads went dark; now she held Ada’s copies of the town evacuation agreements.
Between them, on an overturned milk crate, sat the child.
She wore the brown ribbed sweater Mrs. Ellis had washed in rain runoff, sleeves cuffed at the wrists. Her chin was small, her dark hair cut blunt across her brow. When she shifted, the overhead tube—running off the civic alternator at half-voltage—hummed against her temples.
