Senseless Acts of Beauty Read Online Free Page B

for sure. How long have you been looking for your birth mother?”
    “A couple of months, maybe.”
    Sadie plucked at her wet socks and considered how much more to say. When she was in grammar school, she didn’t think twice about the fact that somewhere in the big, wide world was the mother who’d given birth to her. She was more concerned about whether Santa would ignore her parent’s no video game rule and leave her a Nintendo DS under the tree for Christmas. All she really understood was that she was special because she was adopted. She’d been chosen , her mom used to tell her.
    Only recently had she come to understand that she’d been given away .
    “A couple of months, huh?” Riley said. “Aren’t you a little young to be taking on such a difficult search?”
    Sadie sighed. If she were just three inches taller, or ten pounds heavier, people wouldn’t give her so much sass. But she’d always been small and skinny no matter how much she ate. “I’ll be fifteen in six weeks. Isn’t there a way to check when a towel went missing?”
    “Actually, no.”
    “But you keep track, right?”
    “A towel is a towel, Sadie. There’s no individual identifier. Here at Camp Kwenback, we just figure out how many have gone missing by the end of the season, and then we order a bunch from a company in Rochester that does the embroidery.”
    Rochester. Sadie frowned. She didn’t realize there could be another place that this towel might have come from.
    “Every year,” Riley continued, “we lose some in the wash, we throw the stained ones out, and many a guest has left with a towel or two in their luggage, either unintentionally or as souvenirs.” She waved a hand around the room. “Maybe if my grandparents had searched luggage routinely all those years ago, we could have saved enough in the budget to buy new couches.”
    Suddenly Sadie imagined the crowds of people who’d used those towels—lodgers, Riley’s family, friends, employees—and others, too, maybe a whole factory in Rochester. She had assumed that the towel meant something. Now she wondered if the towel was just a piece of cloth that a nurse had grabbed out of a lost-and-found box.
    A shadow fell over her and Sadie realized that Riley had stood up.
    Riley asked, “Is there someone I could call?”
    “Nope.”
    “A friend, family?”
    Sadie tightened her jaw so she wouldn’t say too much. She probably should just make up a story about her parents camping in the woods. She could tell Riley she’d head back once the rain stopped. Then she could hike into the woods until Riley couldn’t see her anymore, then circle around and set up camp in the farthest cabin. She needed to sleep but most of all she needed to think.
    But the words wouldn’t come. She felt odd, light-headed, sort of nauseous, like she’d drunk the hot chocolate and eaten the grilled cheese too fast. And it was weird having Riley standing right in front of her, smelling like vanilla and sugar.
    Riley said, “The rain is likely to continue for a while. I’ve got a bunch of empty rooms upstairs. I’ve always found that everything looks better after a hot bath and a good night’s sleep. You want to stay for the night?”
    Sadie began to tremble. It felt like months, not weeks, since she lay her head down in her own room and fell asleep to the rumble of cars passing on the street outside. She could imagine the inn’s bed, a real one, not the rain-slick, moldy, plastic-covered mattresses in the last cabin. A bed with a soft pillow under her head instead of her lumpy backpack. Clean sheets in a warm room with no blackflies or mosquitos.
    But there was danger in falling asleep. She might wake up to find the police waiting for her.
    “The room is free for weather refugees,” Riley said, winking. “Besides, I suspect you could use the sleep. Believe it or not, I know exactly how you feel right now.”
    Sadie turned her face away. She’d heard words like that all her life, from