“Mom?” Scarlett said, hoisting herself up and looking over the desk.

Her mother was not crouching underneath.

Scarlett looked around in bafflement, then went behind the desk and sat down.

A tall woman suddenly stepped from behind the archway leading to the dining room. She had short, deep brown hair, cut through with an even darker streak, like a chipmunk. She wore skinny jeans on the bottom and a pink kimonolike shirt on top. Scarlett had seen lots of similar items in Chinatown, but there was something about the way the material hugged her form so gracefully, how the pink was soft and muted instead of super shiny…something told her that this was the real deal. Silk. Thick silk. Many worms had given all they had to make that shirt.

The woman was standing with her fisted hands planted on her hips. Something about her stance suggested that at any moment she might raise her arms above her head and superhero it right through the ceiling and every consecutive floor until she hit the sky.

Both Scarlett and the woman stared a bit on seeing each other.

“Did you just call me mom?” the woman said.

“Not you,” Scarlett said quickly. “My mom…is here.”

“Your mother is here?” the woman said, looking around.

“Not right now.”

“But she’s staying here?”

“No.”

“Should you be behind that desk?” the woman asked.

“Do you need help?” Scarlett replied.

“Do you work here?”

“I live here,” Scarlett said. “I can help you.”

“Oh, so your mother is…” Scarlett could see the woman putting two and two together and slowly, ever so slowly, pulling a four into focus. “Who said child labor was dead? I’m being helped. But thank you. Someone, probably your mother, is getting me an espresso as we speak, an espresso that will hopefully prevent me from falling over. I’ve just gotten off the plane from Thailand. Twenty-nine hours. Have you ever been on a plane for twenty-nine hours? I haven’t sat still that long since I did a marathon meditation for two days when I was on the ashram. My ass could take it then. I don’t want to sit down again for a week, at least. I’ll admit it. I have jet lag.”

The majority of that was delivered in one long breath. She swiveled her torso, cracking her back loudly, then strode over to the desk and peered at the framed pictures that hung behind it, showing all the successive generations of Martins posed in front of the hotel. The last picture had been taken four years ago. Scarlett loved the way her braces caught the sun in it. Eleven had been a rough year, for many reasons.

“God!” the woman said. “How many of you are there?”

“You mean my brothers and sisters? Four.”

“Four!” The woman laughed again. It was a strangely animated laugh, like someone had attached her chin to a string and was jerking it toward the sky. “You don’t see that much in the city. I guess your parents aren’t fans of birth control.”