Excerpt from Tides by Sara Freeman, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

In the morning, she finds it hard to look at him. She pours him his cereal instead, his milk, dunks a spoon in it. Aquí tienes. He boasts about a girlfriend, a toddler back home. Two years, six months, three weeks and a day: this is how long it's been since he's seen them last. He is thick and strong and still growing, his front teeth too big for his mouth. She wants to touch the down on the upper lip and say, There, there.

She counts backward, tries to do her own dismal math. August, July, June, May, April, March. Five months since she saw her own child, eyes stuck shut, limp as an unclenched fist.

James Taylor is gone, but Joan Baez is there to replace him. She sings a song called 'Colorado', in which the only lyric is Colorado, repeated over and then over again. When she thinks the song is over, Joan begins again: Colorado ... Colorado. In Canada, where she is from, no one ever sings songs about Alberta.

The season is nearly done. She lets the fact of it wash over her.  The city folks have gone home, the hostel will close. She hears it but the words are water and she a gripless surface, a flat expanse. The day arrives and the men are all packed up. I miss you, she tells them in Spanish. She doesn't know the future tense for missing. There is a van here to pick them up. She stands outside, nose running, waving, a single arm wrapped around her for warmth, a mother sending her boys off on the school bus.

The girls at the reception desk tell her she's got one day to clear out. They feel sorry for her, but they are only teenagers. Senior year, they say to her like a question and an answer all rolled into one. She tries to turn her phone back on, but the screen stays dark, every crevice filled with sand.

They tell her that if she helps them clean the place, she can stay three more nights. She vacuums and mops the floors, cleans the toilets and the scum between the tiles. She covers the furniture with tarps. She cleans the kitchen, consolidates all the half-eaten boxes of spaghetti into a single Ziploc bag. In the lost and found, she finds three dresses and two sarongs, a hot plate and a nightlight, an elegant fountain pen with the two parts of the nib violently split apart. The three of them collect 168 dollars' worth of coins, under the beds, inside the couches, in the laundry room under the machines. The girls whisper to one another and sheepishly offer her twenty dollars in dimes. She finds a lighter with a woman's silhouette on it. When it is upright, the woman wears a pretty pink dress. When she flips it upside down, the woman bares her ample breasts, a tassel, mid-twirl, on each nipple. During their lunch break, she sits in the sun and flips the lighter up and then down, up and then down again. The girls place a paper plate at her feet, a hot dog adorned with two perfect stripes: one red, one gold.

Three hundred and twenty-three dollars. This is counting the twenty dollars in dimes.

The three days are up. Just one more night, she begs. The girls hesitate, convene privately. Fine, they say, but tomorrow morning you're gone, or else we're going to have to call the boss. The next afternoon, they find her, still asleep in the cavernous room. He's coming now, they warn her. He knows about you and he is displeased. They use this word, displeased, as though it is a word she might not have heard before. They lay it on thick. They took a chance on her and now she's going to have to pay. She was their age once, sharpening herself against her own blunt force. And so she tells them she's very sorry, gives them fifty dollars, and buys them a six-pack each before taking her leave.

There are just hours left before sundown. Her backpack is heavy with hostel gleanings; the weight bears down on her shoulders, right down into her heels. Maybe she'll sleep on the public beach; she thinks of the tent, the mangled feet. She buys an ice-cream cone, soft vanilla sprinkled with a messy hand. She walks along the main street, not thinking, every mouthful too sweet. She takes inventory of her skills. The list is short and so, easy to remember.

Excerpted from Tides by Sara Freeman. Copyright © 2022 by Sara Freeman. Excerpted by permission of Grove Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.