Remaking Read Online Free

$69.78 with tax.”
    Mitchell handed the woman his credit
card.
    Behind the front desk, a row of Hummels stood
in perfect formation atop a black and white television airing “The
Price is Right.”
    Mitchell signed the receipt. “Could I have
112 or 114?”
    The old woman stubbed out her cigarette in a
glass ashtray and reached for the key cabinet.
     
    Mitchell pressed his ear to the wood
paneling.
    A television blared through the thin
wall.
    His cell phone vibrated—Lisa calling
again.
    Flipped it open.
    “Mitch? You don’t have to say anything.
Please just listen—”
    He powered off the phone and continued
writing in the notebook.
     
    Afternoon unspooled as the snow piled up in
the parking lot of the Antlers Motel. Mitchell parted the blinds
and stared through the window as the first intimation of dusk began
to blue the sky, the noise of the television next door droning
through the walls.
    He lay down on top of the covers and stared
at the ceiling and whispered the Lord’s Prayer.
     
    In the evening, he startled out of sleep to
the sound of a door slamming, sat up too fast, the blood rushing to
his head in a swarm of black spots. He hadn’t intended to
sleep.
    Mitchell slid off the bed and walked to the
window, split the blinds, heard the diminishing sound of
footsteps—a single set—squeaking in the snow.
    He saw the boy pass through the illumination
of a streetlamp and disappear into the alcove that housed the
vending machines.
     
    The snowflakes stung Mitchell’s cheeks as he
crossed the parking lot, his sneakers swallowed up in six inches of
fresh powder.
    The hum of the vending machines intensified,
and he picked out the sound of coins dropping through a slot.
    He glanced once over his shoulder at the row
of rooms, the doors all closed, windows dark save slivers of
electric blue from television screens sliding through the
blinds.
    Too dark to tell if the man was watching.
    Mitchell stepped into the alcove as the boy
pressed his selection on the drink machine.
    The can banged into the open compartment, and
the boy reached down and claimed the Sprite.
    “Hi, Joel.”
    The boy looked up at him, then lowered his
head like a scolded dog, as though he’d been caught vandalizing the
drink machine.
    “No, it’s all right. You haven’t done
anything wrong.”
    Mitchell squatted down on the concrete.
    “Look at me, son. Who’s that man you’re
with?”
    The voice so soft and high: “Daddy.”
    A voice boomed across the parking lot. “Joel?
It don’t take this long to buy a can of pop! Make a decision and
get back here.”
    The door slammed.
    “Joel, do you want to come with me?”
    “You’re a stranger.”
    “No, my name’s Mitch. I’m a police officer
actually. Why don’t you come with me.”
    “No.”
    “I think you probably should.” Mitchell
figuring he had maybe thirty seconds before the father stormed
out.
    “Where’s your badge?”
    “I’m undercover right now. Come on, we don’t
have much time. You need to come with me.”
    “I’ll get in trouble.”
    “No, only way you’ll get in trouble is by not
obeying a police officer when he tells you to do something.”
Mitchell noticed the boy’s hands trembling. His were, too. “Come
on, son.”
    He put his hand on the boy’s small shoulder
and guided him out of the alcove toward his car, where he opened
the front passenger door and motioned for Joel to get in.
    Mitchell brushed the snow off the windows and
the windshield, and as he climbed in and started the engine, he saw
the door to 113 swing open in the rearview mirror.
     
    “You eaten yet?”
    “No.”
    Main Street empty and the newly-scraped
pavement already frosting again, the reflection of the high beams
blinding against the wall of pouring snow.
    “Are you hungry?”
    “I don’t know.”
    He turned right off Main, drove slow down a
snow-packed side street that sloped past little Victorians, inns,
and motels, Joel buckled into the passenger seat, the can of