SHE LEAVES the motel and drives through the city, hoping to catch sight of Georgia by chance. She thinks she sees her outside of the Knife and Fork Inn—a glimpse of yellow-blonde hair tossed over a narrow shoulder. She nearly causes an accident when she jerks the car to a halt, but as the driver behind her passes, swearing at her through his window, her stomach sinks—not Gee at all.

She parks at Caesars and wanders through the lobby with its hollow Corinthian columns and statues of helmeted men on horseback. She walks the boardwalk, the old wooden roller coaster rattling along its tracks, in the distance the shrill shouts of lifeguards’ whistles directing swimmers down on the beach. But all day long she pictures the man pointing. Wondering what he could have meant.

Deborah drinks more coffee from a kiosk at the Tropicana; it tastes like it was made from dishwater, but the warmth in her gut keeps her going. She hasn’t eaten since she left Eagles Mere. She sits for a second at a little wrought iron table made to look like it was imported from New Orleans. She wonders if that’s why Gee chose this place: everything here was encouraged to look like something it was not. Here, Gee could be someone other than the girl Deborah raised: a girl who lives on the streets, someone without a mother worrying over her every move. Deborah’s feet throb and her ankles are swelling from all the walking. She knows there will be angry red marks where her socks cut into her legs. But every second that she sits is a second that she could be looking. What if, she thinks, her daughter has changed so much in the past five years that Deborah might not recognize her anymore? No. A mother would always know her child. Behind all the disappointment, the anger between them, whatever these past years have wrought, Georgia would never be a stranger to her.

She waits until close to midnight to go back to the Sunset Motel, spending the evening drifting between banks of slot machines and poker tables, the occasional whoop rising from one of the players, but most gambling with grim determination, as though they are listening to an unfavorable medical diagnosis. She thinks of how strange it is, that so many things we expect to bring us pleasure end up causing pain.

As Deborah pulls into the motel parking lot, a girl with red hair runs out, tears in her eyes, begs to use her phone. She is too numb, too exhausted, to ask the girl how else she can help, to find out what exactly is wrong. She hands the girl her cell and wonders, vaguely, if she’ll ever see it again, decides she doesn’t care.