Maya batted her extraordinarily long, spiky dark lashes. She really had gotten all the very best DNA from the gene pool, Letty thought. “I wanna go swimmin’.”

“What’s your name, sweetheart?”

“Maya Abigail. And I am four years old, and I go to big-girl school.”

The manager was instantly besotted, Letty saw. Maya had that effect on people. Like her mother.

“They have a pool at the Econo Lodge,” Joe pointed out.

Ava stood up and looked around the motel lobby with a sigh. “Maybe the old storage unit?”

“Mom!”

Letty looked from Ava to Joe. “She’s your mom?”

“Guilty,” Ava said, giving her son a warning glance. “Look, we haven’t rented it out in years, because it’s the only efficiency unit in the place, and it’s tiny, but there’s nothing magical in there. Just a bunch of old broken lounge chairs and faded bedspreads and random junk I’ve been meaning to get rid of.…”

“As long as there’s a bed and a bathroom, I’m fine with small. I’m used to small,” Letty said, thinking of all the roach motel rooms she’d rented back in New York. She sounded desperate, but that was because she really was desperate.

“And who’s gonna haul away all that crap in there?” Joe demanded.

“I will,” Letty said.

“In that piece-of-shit Kia?”

Letty really, really wanted to kick him in the nuts. “I saw a dumpster in your parking lot.”

“That’s true,” Ava said. She glanced at her son, and then down at Maya, with her bedraggled stuffed toy elephant.

“Tell you what. If you want to clear it out, and drag all that stuff to the dumpster, you got a deal. I know there’s a bed in there, but I can’t vouch for what kind of shape the mattress is in. The bathroom is nasty, but the last I knew it worked. And there’s a sort of kitchenette. You probably don’t need more than that.”

“I don’t,” Letty said. “That’s enough for us.”

“I can’t spare a housekeeper to help you,” Ava warned.

Letty nodded and thought about the wad of cash she’d stuffed under the front seat of the Kia. She could already feel it shrinking. “If I empty it out and clean it up, what would the weekly rate be?”

“No housekeeping?” Ava asked.

“No, ma’am,” Letty said, laying it on thick. “My little girl and I just need a place to stay, at the beach. I’m used to working hard, and cleaning up after myself.”

“For how long?” Joe asked.

“Not sure,” Letty said. “Can we figure it out as we go along?”

Ava looked at her son, who just shrugged and looked away.

“Fine with me,” Ava decided. “How’s three hundred a week?”

“If I paid in cash instead of a credit card, could you do a little better?”