Chapter 6 - The Hotel RoomI checked into a sterile, nondescript hotel near the river. Once inside the room, I mechanically placed the groceries inside the miniature refrigerator. The beef roast barely fit, wedged between a tiny bottle of orange juice and a plastic ice tray. The fresh green beans remained in their paper bag on the desk.
The sight of those green beans made me cry with an intensity that genuinely shocked me. I fell onto the stiff hotel bed, sobbing into the generic, bleach-scented pillows. I was not crying over vegetables. I was mourning the woman who had happily chosen them that morning. I was mourning the illusion of the family I thought I was returning to, a family waiting to be made whole by a Sunday dinner on a Tuesday.
Hours passed. The sun dipped below the Pittsburgh skyline, casting long, bruised shadows across the river.
Shortly after sunset, a soft knock sounded at my door.
I wiped my face, walked to the door, and looked through the peephole. Noah stood in the hallway alone. He wore the same college sweatshirt he had been wearing in the bed. His dark hair was damp from a light evening rain, and his shoulders seemed impossibly narrow. He held an old, wooden-framed photograph against his chest like a shield.
I opened the door, stepping back, but I did not immediately invite him in.
“How did you find me?” I asked.
“Dad remembered this hotel from when the apartment pipes froze a few years ago,” Noah said softly.
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“I told him not to ask where I was.”
“He didn't ask. He guessed.” Noah looked down at his shoes, then at the photograph in his hands. “I wanted you to see something.”
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