“No,” she says, as automatic as a flinch. She hitches her bag higher up her arm and steps back out of the door. She wants to show Georgia’s photo to the boys who’d been gathered in the parking lot, but by this time they’ve scattered. She is about to get in her car when she notices a man sitting alone at the base of the motel sign. He seems agitated, is rocking back and forth on his haunches and rubbing his eyes—drugs, she assumes—but she grips the key tight in her hand, reaches for the photo with the other.

He doesn’t look up at her, even when she thinks he should feel her standing there.

“Excuse me,” she says, trying to bolster her voice with any semblance of steadiness, strength, she can muster. He doesn’t turn. “Excuse me.” Nothing. She taps him on the shoulder and he flinches, then turns to her with watering eyes.

“I’m looking for my daughter. Have you seen her? Her name is Georgia. Georgia Willis. Sometimes she goes by Peaches.”

The man doesn’t say anything. He acts as though he hasn’t heard her. “Please,” she says, her voice wavering. For the first time since Georgia called, she thinks she might start to cry. She had steeled herself against losing her daughter, but this was a feeling she had not been prepared for: hope.

The man looks at her again, then at the picture, and his face changes.

“You know her,” she says. “Please, tell me anything you can. When did you see her last?”

He raises his hand and points, back in the direction of the motel.

“I know she stays there sometimes.” The man can’t hear, she realizes. She wonders if he can talk at all. He stands and points again, his arms trembling, his eyes wide.

“I don’t understand,” she says. She fishes through her purse for a piece of paper and a pen, but the man has started to walk away. She calls after him to wait, but even if he can’t hear her, he knows she is following him. He reaches the shoulder of the expressway and picks up his pace, starts to run. She toes out onto the shoulder and a truck thunders past, blares its horn. Her ears ringing, she steps back into the parking lot and watches the man shrink into the distance, feeling like he has just given her something and taken something at the same time, but she couldn’t say what.