The Hotel

For a few seconds, I thought about getting in the truck. I knew the route south without looking at a map: Highway 213 to Salem, the interstate through the rest of Oregon, then ten hours to Santa Rosa if I drove hard and nothing went wrong. I pictured myself walking into the Fountaingrove Inn wearing the same clothes I had on at the desk. Then I looked at the check-in email again. Cassie was already inside that hotel, and driving all night wasn't going to tell me who was with her.

My hands weren't steady, and I dialed the same wrong digit twice. The third attempt went through. While it rang, I sat at the desk I'd built, in the house where my family was supposed to live with me. A woman answered with the polished voice people use near the end of a shift. “Good evening. Thank you for calling.”

“Hi. I need to be connected to my wife's room, please. Her name is Cassie Wolcott. It's a family emergency.” My voice sounded much calmer than I felt. She told me she could connect me if I had the room number. I said I didn't, then told her there had been an accident and I needed to reach her right away. That part wasn't true, but it was the only thing I could think of that might get me past the hotel's rule. Then she asked, “May I ask who's calling, sir?”

“Yes, my name is Bill Wolcott.” There was a pause while she decided what to do with me. I could hear voices in the lobby behind her and the faint tapping of a keyboard. Then she said, “One moment, please,” and put me on hold.

The hold music was the kind of instrumental music hotels used so callers wouldn't have to sit in silence. I counted because counting gave me something to do. Fifteen seconds. Twenty. Thirty. I sat without moving, listening to music from a hotel in the town where I was born, until the line clicked and a man answered the telephone in my wife's room.

“Hello?” His voice was deep and relaxed. A television was playing behind him. I had never heard the voice before, and there was no hesitation in it, no concern about who might be calling the room a little after eight on a Friday night. He sounded like a man who belonged there.

“Can you put Cassie on, please?” I heard a hand cover the receiver. The sound went muffled, and two people said something I couldn't make out. Then the line cleared.

“Hello?” Cassie's voice was flat. She didn't sound surprised. She sounded like somebody had handed her the telephone while she was doing something else.

“It's me,” I said. She went quiet. I could hear her breathing and the television behind her. I told her the hotel check-in email had appeared on our computer at 7:43. She didn't ask what email I meant, what hotel I was talking about, or why I thought she was there. She knew exactly what I had seen.

I asked who he was. Cassie said, “A friend.” When I asked what friend, she told me, “You don't know him.” I didn't. I had been with her for almost a decade, and a man I'd never heard of had just answered the telephone in her hotel room. I could hear my pulse in the earpiece, but the first clear thought I had was about the kids.

I asked where the kids were. Cassie said they were fine and where they were supposed to be. I told her I'd talked to Mike earlier and that he claimed he didn't know she was in town, then asked again where Jaxon and the girls were.

“They're safe. Don't worry about it.” That answer broke through whatever calm I still had. “Don't worry about it? There's a man in your hotel room. Nobody has called me all day, and you're telling me not to fucking worry about it?”

“They're fine,” she said. Her voice never rose. “They're taken care of.” I still didn't know where the kids were or why Mike had denied knowing they were there. All I had was what Cassie had told me before the trip, what Mike had just denied, and the email showing that my wife had checked into a hotel.

“Are you sleeping with him?” My voice sounded smaller than I expected, and even as I asked, I thought it was a stupid question. My brain was spiraling. She didn't answer right away. I heard the man move somewhere behind her, and the pause lasted long enough that I had my answer before she gave it to me.