hadnât smoked in years. With every inhalation she tasted poison. She got through the pack anyway. Audrey sat by the motelâs pool, sweating. Smoking a cigarette every few hours. The owner of The Mirage Inn cleaned the pool after the second day.
She picked up the phone to call her son but could not dial the number. Danâs mother would answer and Audrey wasnât ready for that conversation. The many comments over the years. Grandma saying how much Keenan resembled Audrey, never seeing Daniel in her grandson. The comments delivered softly, lovinglyâbrutal every time they were uttered. Each one, another crack in the glass, splitting and growing into a whole tree of branches and roots like sheâd seen occasionally in windscreens, eventually spreading through everything Audrey saw. Maybe Danâs mother would say, âWell, I knew those lovely blue eyes didnât belong to us. No eyes of that kind on our side of the family.â A final crack in Audreyâs glassâin the tree of fractures that had grown within the framework of her bones. Audrey put the phone down and didnât make the call.
Keenan would be happy at Grandmaâs for a few more days. He adored the old lady. A woman who loved Keenan so much she bought him clothes and toys practically every week, devoting a room to him in her house: decals on the walls of lions and monkeys and giraffes and rhinos; leopard-skin pyjamas for a new bed with zebra sheets.
All because she had believed he was a genetic reflection of herself, even if it wasnât something she could see with her own eyes. Audrey had spent days on the telephone looking for Daniel. Now she couldnât pick up the receiver in her motel room to dial one number.
Was she supposed to call Danâs mother and tell her that Keenan belonged to Audrey and no-one else in the world? If she was honest with herself, her hesitation wasnât because she felt pity for the old woman. Audrey knew Keenan would barely understand. Also, that he would have a lifetime to remember the day his mother broke his heart. Audrey wanted to pick up the phone and ask Danâs mother, all of that love for Keenan, was it really nothing more than genetic vanity? Was there anything left over for the boy himself?
Danielâs mobile sat there on the windowsill overlooking the pool. It had rung a few times, friends or people at work wanting to know what had happened to him. She hadnât been able to answer why he had disappeared, even if it felt obvious to Audrey. What else could it be other than a catastrophic mistake she had made? A permanent error that wasnât erased because it was random and stupid and brief. Every time Audrey had said she didnât know why or where or how, she knew the only possible answer became clearer to everyone asking. She had charged the phone when she found it, but she left his mobile where it was and let the battery die.
Audrey had assumed it was an accident, yet the phone had led her to The Mirage Inn, and this room. The photograph was for Audrey, placed in the bedside table as Daniel walked out of The Mirage Inn. Going where? Going anywhere. In fairytales, breadcrumbs were left behind when people went missing. Daniel had come to the desert and left behind these last bits and pieces of his life.
Audrey didnât want to leave the image behind and she couldnât take it with her. Before she left the motel she cut the image of Steve May into small pieces with a pair of scissors. Sheâd checked the roomâs drawers again as well as the wardrobe and the compartment behind the sliding bathroom mirrors for anything else Daniel might have left behind.
Below the bed she found the dusty wrapper of a condom and wondered if this was something heâd used. On a rod in the wardrobe hung a silver suit that held the odour of an old man, and there was a childâs toothbrush on top of the medicine cabinet.
The only other thing she had found was a