The walkie-talkie on the front desk hissed, crackled, and finally resolved into Lu's lilting voice: "At what point," she said, "do we worry the guy in two-oh-six is dead?"

The couple across the counter from me glanced at one another. Bargain hunters. We only saw two kinds of people at the Mid-Night Inn — Bargains and Desperates — and these were classic Bargains, here. The two kids, covered in mustard stains from eating home-packed sandwiches, whined that the place didn't have a pool. The mother had already scanned the lobby for any reference to a free continental breakfast. We didn't offer continental breakfast, not even the not-free kind.

I slid their key cards to them, smiling, and flicked the volume knob down on the radio before Lu convinced them they'd prefer to get back in their car and try their luck farther down the road.

"Which room are we in, again?" said the woman.

"Two-oh-four," I said.

"And you said we could go to Taco Bell," cried the little girl, five or so. A glittering pink barrette that must have started the day neatly holding back her corn-silk hair now clung by a few strands. She threw herself at her mother's feet and wailed into the carpet. "But they don't even have a Taco Bell."

The boy, a few years older, had pressed himself against the glass door to the bar. "Mommy," he hissed. "All these people are drinking alcohol."

It was after nine — way past someone's bedtime. The parents and I negotiated by a series of glances between the key cards and each other. They wouldn't get tacos, a free breakfast, or a swim, but the odds seemed better on a dead body in the room next door. "Why don't I get you a room with a little more — privacy?" I took back the cards and pretended to click around on the computer for better options.

Under the kids' keening and questions, Lu's low, complaining voice murmured on the radio, and then the door chimed, signaling another visitor.

The Mid-Night Inn had only twelve operational rooms, seven even-numbered upstairs and five odd-numbered down, plus the lobby and bar. In the right light, it had old-school charm. The balcony's wrought-iron railing swirled in a fancy design that snagged our uniform skirts' hems. "Filigree," Billy called it, when he accused us of never sweeping the cobwebs from it. It was a nice touch. We had a single-star rating from some hospitality association, left over, surely, from better days.

Now the Mid-Night was a step above a roadside dive. Technically, it was a roadside dive, nestled between the roaring interstate and an overpassing state road out of town that led into the dusty countryside. The motel was a big two-story U of rooms, all with exterior doors on a wraparound walkway, all overlooking a slim patch of grass and a couple of struggling crabapple trees. Billy called that the "courtyard," and the eight closed rooms on the other side of the bar that had been left to ruin, "the south wing." At the open end of the courtyard, only a rusty chain-link fence tangled with scrub and brush separated the Mid-Night from the rushing cars below.

In the summer, the Mid-Night's old, blinking neon sign regularly pulled guests off the highway. We got minivan parents who'd misjudged how long they could listen to their kids howl and lone drivers who found they couldn't keep themselves awake until they reached Indianapolis. We often got people who used their expensive, high-tech phones to search for the cheapest overnight stay they could get.

But now in the off season, people could do better and usually did. I could say the Mid-Night was at least a clean place to lay your head. But I was the one who cleaned it, and I knew that wasn't true.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the new arrival, a woman in a long coat, hesitate at the door. Her, the Bargains, the dead guy in two-oh-six — this was officially a crowd for a Monday night in the spring, especially since it was just me and Luisa holding down the fort while Billy had his night off. Lu was out pretending to clean up the courtyard while I kept the front desk, and tomorrow morning, we'd flip back to mornings for the rest of the week. I'd get to clean up vending-machine taco-chip crumbs after these cheapskates got back on the road, while she fended off anyone who came looking for a free Danish. Or comment cards. We didn't offer comment cards, either.

I handed over the updated key cards to the Bargains. "You have a nice night," I said. The mother had already decided I was some kind of simpleton. She and her husband each pulled a child along behind them toward the door. I'd put them as far away from the dead guy's room as I could — which located them right over the Mid-Night bar, open 'til two in the morning.

The woman at the door still hadn't decided if she was coming in. She held the door for the family, letting the parade of misery pass back out into the night and watching after them for far too long.

I'd already known there existed a breed of women who made the rest of us notice how far off the mark we were, but they didn't often stumble into the Mid-Night. This woman was their queen. Her clothes draped as if they'd been trained. Her golden hair hung loose and perfectly careless. She was tall and angular, with a chiseled masterpiece of a jaw.

In the middle of the floor lay the sparkling barrette from the little girl's hair. I slipped around the desk and plucked it up, watching the woman all the while. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear as we both watched the family tramp toward the stairs with their mismatched luggage. The open door let in the smell of green cornfields and wet grass.

I pressed the barrette against my palm and slid it into my pocket.

"Can you pull the door?" I said. "You're letting in bugs."

It was cheap, but all I had. Compared to her, I was shorter, chubbier, mousier.

Poorer — that went without saying. I looked down at what I was wearing. Ouch. Her raincoat, as supple as butter and with the belt tied in a casual knot at the back, probably cost more than I made in a month. It wasn't even raining anymore.

She closed the door, a gracious smile cranking up to blind me as she swept across the lobby.

But then she stopped. The smile cut short. "Juliet? Juliet Townsend, is that you?"

A thousand thoughts shoved into my mind at the same time, jamming the works. I couldn't think. I couldn't speak. On the desk, the walkie-talkie hissed and crackled. "Juliet?" Lu's voice, turned to nearly zero, sounded like a bomb going off in the empty lobby. "Jules, I'm serious, pick up."

The woman looked at the radio unit on the counter, then me. The smile came back, a few megawatts shy of its original glow. That superstar grin I'd almost received was reserved for customer service. For getting the best room available, and maybe an extra set of towels. This smile — well, this was the surprised-slash-horrified gesture reserved for ex–best friends discovered working below their potential in roadside crap-heaps.

My brain finally jarred loose, throwing out the shard of a memory: a blond ponytail bouncing against thin shoulders, three paces ahead. Nothing holding me back but my aching lungs and burning thighs, and nothing ahead of me but that chiseled jaw, resolutely set toward the finish line.

"Madeleine Bell," I said. The name had always meant the same thing to me. Another loss. Another very...