Chapter 5 - The Motel Room Breakdown
Eight miles north, in Room 114 of the Budget Inn, the air smelled of stale cigarette smoke, damp carpet, and cheap disinfectant. Two battered suitcases sat open on the sagging queen mattress, spilling clothes onto the floor.
Megan sat in the corner on a plastic chair, her arms crossed over her chest, glaring at Trevor like he was a cockroach crawling across the linoleum.
"Card declined! Again!" she spat, throwing her compact mirror onto the laminate table. "The CVS wouldn't even let me buy diapers for Lily! What did you do with the credit card?!"
Trevor was pacing between the bathroom door and the small, blurry television bolted to the wall. His knuckles were raw from punching the steering wheel of his car an hour earlier. His hair was greasy, his shirt stained with coffee from yesterday’s forced eviction.
"She blocked the accounts, okay?!" Trevor roared, kicking an empty plastic cooler across the room. "The old woman called the bank and reported the card lost! She locked down the online portal! I tried the security questions, but she changed the answers! Who the hell changes their mother's maiden name to something random?!"
"You told me she was weak!" Megan screamed, standing up and poking him hard in the chest. "You told me we'd have that house forever! You promised me that when she died, we'd sell it and buy the five-bedroom in Oakridge! Now we're living in a crack motel with forty-two dollars in cash, my mother won't take us in because she hates you, and your sister hung up on you!"
"Shut up, Megan! Just shut up and let me think!"
"Think about what?! You threw her dinner on the ground like a moron!" Megan's voice rose to an ear-splitting pitch. "I told you not to push her that far! I told you she was getting that look in her eye!"
"You laughed!" Trevor fired back, his face turning purple as he leaned into her face. "Don't act innocent now, you bitch! You sat right there with your margarita and laughed at her! You told her she looked like a pathetic turtle trying to pick that meat up!"
"Because you were supposed to have her under control!" Megan yelled back, tears of pure venom streaking her makeup. "You said she was terrified of dying alone! You said she'd do anything to keep the grandkids around!"
Trevor collapsed onto the edge of the bed, burying his face in his hands. The cheap bedsprings groaned under his weight.
For thirty-five years, Trevor had operated under a single, fundamental assumption: Martha was a safety net that could never break. Whenever he wrecked a car, she paid the deductible. Whenever he got fired, she covered his car note. Whenever he overspent, she cooked him dinner and slipped a fifty-dollar bill into his jacket pocket.
He had believed she was an endless well of meek, guilt-ridden maternal devotion.
"She has over four hundred grand in cash right now," Trevor muttered through his fingers. "Four hundred grand. That’s my inheritance. She's sitting in some fancy apartment spending my future."
"Then go get it," Megan hissed, leaning over him, her voice suddenly dropping into a low, predatory murmur. "You're her son. Go find where she is. Throw yourself at her feet. Cry. Bring the kids when they get back on Friday. Make her look at Noah and Lily."
Trevor looked up, his red-rimmed eyes calculating. "She blocked my number. She blocked Brenda. She’s not answering anyone."
"Then we find her lawyer," Megan said, a wicked gleam in her eye. "Old man Paul. He’s sixty-five and soft in the head. We follow him from his office. We find her building. And you don't leave her lobby until she writes a check."
Trevor wiped his nose with the back of his hand and stood up. The arrogance returned to his spine, fragile and hollow, but enough to stand on.
May you like
"Yeah," Trevor said, grabbing his car keys from the dresser. "She's an old woman. She won't last three days without someone helping her carry the groceries. She'll crack."
***
