PART 2
Greg’s face went from red to white.
“That’s a company booking,” he said quickly. “For overflow. For clients.” “For five nights?” I asked. “Booked two months ago? When you begged me to come to Orlando?”
He didn’t answer.
The woman, Shaye, was already gathering her things.
“He told me you were divorced,” she said quietly to me. “He said his ex was here with their kid and wouldn’t leave him alone.”
She walked out of Room 914 without looking back at him.
Mr. Obi pulled the key card logs that night, right there on his handheld screen.
9:41 p.m. Room 912’s connecting door opened. Greg walked into 914.
He never went back.
10:52 p.m. Room 912’s hallway door opened from the inside. No key needed.
Daphne had woken up alone in the dark. She went looking for her daddy.
The hallway cameras showed the rest. My three-year-old, in her pajamas, walking down the long hallway, knocking on random doors, crying. Pressing the elevator button. Sitting on the carpet by the ice machine with her knees pulled up.
For twenty-eight minutes.
Two people walked past her. Then a housekeeper named Mirela stopped her cart, knelt down, and wrapped Daphne in a clean towel.
“I have a granddaughter that age,” Mirela told me the next morning, when I found her to thank her. “I couldn’t walk past.”
The hotel called the Orlando police, as they’re required to do. An officer took my statement and Greg’s.
Greg told the officer I’d left Daphne alone to go to the spa.
The officer looked at the key card logs. At the camera timeline. At the spa’s receipt, with my name and the time I arrived and left.
Then he looked back at Greg.
“Sir, the records show you left a three-year-old alone in a hotel room for over ninety minutes. And then you lied to me about it.”
Greg was charged with child neglect.
His company found out on the last morning of the conference. Shaye worked in their marketing department. The company had strict rules about relationships with coworkers, and stricter rules about lying to the police at a company event.
Greg was fired before our flight home.
I took Daphne to my sister’s house in Lexington that night. I filed for divorce on Monday. The judge gave me full custody. Greg sees Daphne every other weekend, supervised.
He pleaded no contest to the neglect charge and completed a parenting class.
Mirela and I still exchange Christmas cards. Every year, she includes a little drawing from her granddaughter. Every year, Daphne sends one back.
Last summer, Daphne and I went back to Florida. Just the two of us. A small hotel on the beach.
The first night, she climbed into my bed and pressed her face against my arm.
“Mommy,” she whispered, “you’re staying all night, right?”
“All night, baby. Every night.”
She was asleep in two minutes.
I stayed awake for a long time, listening to her breathe.
THE END.
