Chapter 6 - The Extended-Stay Trap
The smell of stale grease, industrial carpet cleaner, and cheap pine disinfectant was thick enough to choke on inside Room 114 of the Crossland Extended-Stay Suites off Interstate 85 in Norcross.
It was eight o'clock on Tuesday evening—forty-eight hours after the eviction on Willow Creek.
Outside the thin aluminum-framed window, eighteen-wheelers rumbled past on the highway, their headlights washing across the water-stained popcorn ceiling in rhythmic, sickening waves.
Ethan sat on the edge of the sagging queen mattress, his head buried in his hands.
He was still wearing the same dark denim jeans and wrinkled polo shirt he had grabbed from the luggage on the driveway two days ago. His jaw was dark with three days of thick, uneven stubble, his eyes bloodshot, his hands trembling with a low, continuous tremor.
On the laminate kitchenette counter sat the reality of their new life.
A two-burner electric hot plate. A dented microwave with a cracked turntable.
And in the corner, humming with an irregular, rattling wheeze that sounded like an asthmatic compressor, was a dorm-sized mini-fridge.
Inside sat half a loaf of store-brand white bread, a jar of peanut butter, and two bruised apples.
Beside the bathroom door sat Beverly.
The seventy-year-old woman was sitting in a plastic swivel chair, wrapped in an old woolen blanket she had pulled from the trunk of her Buick. Her silver hair was unwashed, her face pale and sunken, stripped of every luxury cream and serum she had spent a lifetime demanding from other people's paychecks.
"Call her again, Ethan," Beverly whispered, her voice cracked and hoarse from forty-eight hours of weeping.
Ethan didn't move. He stared at the carpet between his sneakers. "She blocked my number, Mom. She blocked your number. She blocked every phone in the family."
"Then call the bank!" Beverly shrieked, her voice rising into that familiar, shrill cadence of panic. "They can't freeze your personal accounts! You have money in your checking! You have your savings!"
"I don't have a savings account, Mom!" Ethan suddenly roared, jumping to his feet, spinning on his mother with bared teeth.
The fury that had been boiling beneath his skin finally exploded, shattering the last illusion of their mother-son alliance.
"The savings account was Lauren’s!" Ethan yelled, his spit flying across the dim room. "Every dollar in that house came from her firm! The checking account had four hundred dollars in it, and the bank seized it yesterday afternoon to cover the legal overdraft fees from the forged loan! We have thirty-eight dollars left on a prepaid debit card, and the motel manager just told me our room key expires at eleven o'clock tomorrow morning!"
Beverly flinched, shrinking back into the plastic chair, clutching the blanket to her chin. "Don't you raise your voice at me, Ethan Whitmore! I am your mother! I raised you! I sacrificed everything for you after your father left!"
"You sacrificed nothing!" Ethan sobbed, tears of pure, pathetic self-pity running down his stubbled cheeks. "You sold your house in Cleveland to pay off your own debts, and you came to Georgia to move into my wife's bedroom! You told me Lauren was weak! You told me that if we put her in her place right after the delivery, she would hand over the checkbook! You convinced me to buy that damn refrigerator!"
He lunged across the small room, kicking the plastic trash can into the wall with a loud, hollow crash.
"That refrigerator cost three thousand dollars, Mom! Three thousand dollars on a card that was declined yesterday morning! And now I’m fired! My engineering license is under review! I have twenty-four hours before the federal marshals serve an indictment for wire fraud, and I am sitting in an extended-stay motel with thirty-eight dollars to my name!"
Beverly began to weep—loud, dry, theatrical sobs that filled the small motel room with a suffocating, useless misery.
"She’s a monster..." Beverly wailed. "A cold-hearted, vindictive monster... leaving an old woman to die in a motel..."
Ethan didn't answer.
He reached onto the laminate counter, grabbed his car keys, and picked up his winter jacket.
"Where are you going?!" Beverly gasped, her eyes widening in panic. "Ethan! You can't leave me here alone! The men in the parking lot... they look like criminals!"
"I'm going to Willow Creek," Ethan said, his voice dropping into a flat, desperate whisper.
May you like
"She won't talk to you! Her brothers will kill you!"
"Then let them kill me," Ethan muttered, walking out the hollow metal door, slamming it shut behind him, leaving his mother weeping into the dark.
