The motel was a fucking dump.
I stood in the parking lot, staring up at the flickering VACANCY sign like it might spontaneously combust and save me the trouble of walking inside. The building was shaped like a horseshoe, two floors of peeling paint and rusted railings, doors the color of old vomit. A kid's tricycle lay overturned near the ice machine. The pool, if you could call it that, was covered in a tarp weighed down with cinder blocks.
"We are in the wrong neighborhood," Geneviève muttered beside me, her hand resting on the gun beneath her jacket. She was leaning against the car, trying to hide her limp, and doing a terrible job of it. "Tell me again why we could not wait until morning?"
"Because she's my mother."
"You keep saying that like it explains everything."
"It does."
