He didn’t know what else to do. He nodded again.
“She was in their house. Finn said the bed wasn’t made. Anna wouldn’t have left it like that.”
“Rachel stayed with them,” he said.
“She watched them die.”
He hadn’t brought a binding of wounds. He had brought something else, something he had not prepared for and couldn’t yet name, but it was coming, he sensed it, with the next word he had to say.
“Yes.”
Cady’s frame seemed to split down the middle, an invisible outpouring of shock and pain.
“I’m so sorry.”
She turned to Finn as if Zac had become invisible. “She really did it. She chose to go. And not tell me she was going.”
Finn clenched his left hand. “Cade.”
“And James. He didn’t warn us. He didn’t warn you.”
“Cady,” Finn said, and this time his voice was sharper.
Cady covered her mouth with both hands and bent over, fast as if she would fall. Zac surged to her side and caught her shoulders, but she wrenched away from him, stumbled, straightened up. Finn made no move toward her.
Her mouth twisted in a grimace that might be nausea. She turned on Zac and snapped her hands to her hips again, but the defiance of the posture was belied by the torn sense of her that was seizing hold of Zac’s chest. She wanted him to think she was angry. She didn’t know she couldn’t fool him.
“You hear this if nothing else. I want her to pay for their lives. She has to pay for every one of them.”
God help him with the words to help them. The words to help Rachel. He had to advocate for them all, even Finn who still hadn’t moved a step or shown a flicker of feeling. Zac’s spirit bent to the assault, Cady’s silent screams too like Rachel’s, grief like a shadow over her, though not so thick as Rachel’s lost despair. He drew a long breath until the stabbing of his ribs jarred him, brought him out of the spiritual hurt at least slightly.
Father, I can’t keep carrying all their pain. Please take it.
His voice strangled as he said the words he thought he was meant to say. “She is paying.”
Cady’s shiny eyes grew cold and hard, emerald ice where vulnerable pools had been a few heartbeats ago. “With what?” She spit the words like a mouthful of vinegar. “With remorse? You’re going to stand there and tell me she’s sorry?”
“She’s suffering. That’s what she is.”
“I certainly hope so! I hope she’s a shattered wreck!”
“She’s that too.”
“Do you know what I am, Zac? Do you even want to know?”
The sky itself seemed to lower toward him, boxing him in. He reached out. Touched her shoulder. Cady punched his arm away.
“I’m left behind.” She covered her face. “Dear Jesus, help me. I’m the one that’s left.”
Now Finn moved. His arms enfolded her, and Cady fell on his neck and clung to him.
“They’re all dead,” she said as if no one had told him before now.
Finn held her up and baby-stepped her across the wide grass lot to the curb of the parking lot. Zac stayed where he was, his chest wrung out like an old dishrag. Finn and Cady hunched together on the curb, his arm around her motionless form. After a few minutes, Finn looked back as if unsure Zac would still be there.
He should go, but Finn beckoned him over. Zac shook his head, and Finn beckoned again. Zac shuffled to them and sat on Cady’s other side. He looked around for witnesses to her distress, but the place remained empty of anyone but them. Grace? Had to be.
He hoped God would give grace for the rest of it. For his coming here, which might be all wrong. This thing was so muddy and muddled, and he had no idea how to make it clean again, if it ever could be.
Arm around Cady, Finn spoke close to her ear. “Not the best place.”
“I can’t stand it.”
“I’m here.”
“It doesn’t help.”
“I know. But I am.”
They sat a long time. At last Cady lifted her head. When she caught sight of Zac beside her, she bristled.
“You didn’t go.”
“I …”
“You said you came to hear us.” She drew a long breath as if to belay an outburst. “There. You heard us. There’s no path. No path I would step foot on if that creature was walking it too.”
He nodded.
She leaned her head on Finn’s shoulder, turning her back. “Go away, Zac.”
He pushed to his feet. “I’m sorry.”
Neither of them acknowledged him.
He turned toward his car. Stupid. Mistake. He had caused more pain. He might have just splintered the family forever.
“Zac,” Finn said.
He turned back to them. “I’m sorry. This was … ill-advised, chasing you down.”
“We need time. We’re … Well …” Finn shrugged as if no words fit.
“Cast down but not destroyed.”
“Reciting that a lot.”
What would they do now? Where would they go? He wanted to ask, but he’d lost the right, if he’d ever had it. If Finn read the questions in Zac’s face, he gave no sign. His gaze moved from Zac to the cars in the lot. Dismissal.
“Bene vale,” Zac said, the farewell he extended never to mortals and never casually. They nodded to each other, and he went to his car.
He had come to be a bridge and opened a divide instead.
THIRTY-FIVE
When hunger finally grew loud enough that he couldn’t ignore it, Zac went for lunch at Salsarita’s, halfway between the lighthouse and downtown. His solitude at a table for four normally wouldn’t have fazed him, but today he could hardly stand it long enough to finish his enchiladas.
Around one o’clock, waiting for his check, he texted Simon. How GOES IT?
Simon’s response was prompt. SHE’S THE WORST CHECKERS PLAYER I’VE EVER SEEN.
HOW’S SHE DOING?
MAJOR ANXIETY, WENT OUT AND SAT IN HER CAR FOR ABOUT 10 MIN. CAME BACK IN WITH A JAR OF SEASHELLS. COUNTS THEM WHEN SHE GETS WORKED UP. SEEMS OKAY NOW.
THANKS.
HOW’S YOUR PEACE MISSION FARING?
FAIL.
GIVE THEM TIME.
Platitudes were no help. He pushed the phone away from him across the table.
A minute later, another text came through. YOU COMING BACK?
Right. Simon didn’t even like checkers. Zac would bring takeout tacos in thanks. He was typing a response when his keypad disappeared, overridden by an incoming call, and his tapping thumbs accepted it before he could see the area code. It wasn’t a number in his contacts.
Solicitor most likely. Well, whatever. He raised the phone to his ear. “Hello.”
“Zachary.”
He leaned forward in his chair as if he could bring himself nearer to the voice. “Moira.”
“It’s me. How are you?”
He’d thought he would be joyful to hear her voice, if only for proof she was safe. But there was no room in him for joy right now, and something else clicked on inside him like the flame of a lighter. He didn’t know what it was.
“I’m okay,” he said. “What about you?”
“Fairly well, all things considered.”
The server brought the check, saw he was on the phone, and smiled with a gesture of anytime. Zac held up a hand and dug his credit card from his wallet, passed it to her, and waited for her to walk away.
“Zac?” Moira said.
“I’m at lunch, just paid the check. Waiting for my card.”
“Oh. I’ll let you—”
“No.” He rubbed at the tension in his jaw. “Stay on the line.”
“Well … all right.”
“Will you tell me where you are?” Around him, the restaurant droning seemed louder while he waited for her to speak. “Okay, just stay with me until I’m out of here.”
No response, but no dial tone either. He’d count it a win.
The server returned, smiled, and
walked away quickly as if Zac’s expression gave away the intensity of the phone call. He gave his usual tip and left, all the while waiting for the dial tone. His heart was pounding. Moira. She might be in the diner across the street. She might be in Australia. The door shut behind him, and the background of voices and forks clinking on plates was replaced by distant traffic and autumn breeze in dry leaves.
“What are you up to?” Moira said.
“Still in Harbor Vale.”
“I figured you’d stick. For a while anyway.”
“Oh yeah?” He got in behind the wheel but didn’t start the car.
“It’s a pleasant place.”
He nearly told her Simon was here too, but if she wanted Simon’s location, she could call him herself.
“And you and David seemed to get along, and he’s so new to us. I’m sure you’ve dragged his entire life story out of him by now.” A smile lifted her voice.
After this week, David felt like a sturdy old friend. “He’s a good guy.”
“Yes.” She said it as if she knew firsthand some piece of the man’s character Zac wasn’t privy to. Maybe she did. Or maybe she was just talking the way Moira always talked, assured, especially of people.
Well. Not always.
The silence had already knotted itself up like a necklace chain left in a pocket. Untangling it would require more energy than Zac had—this moment, today, this week. He leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes.
“I was thinking,” she said after a while, “about that little mutt we used to have, when we were living in the house on Riverton Avenue. How he used to eat our slippers but nothing else in the house. How funny his little scruffy face was.”
He couldn’t lose himself in a blissful memory. Not today. Anyway, their time in the house on Riverton hadn’t been blissful, and they both knew it.
“Henry, wasn’t that what we called him?”
“You know that’s what we called him,” Zac said.
She was quiet.
“So that’s why you’re calling after four weeks without a word. To reminisce about Henry the dog.”
Still nothing.
“Moira, I can’t do this with you.” He tried to keep the bite from his words then decided to let it in. “I can’t sit here working your puzzle. Let’s see, Henry the dog—are you saying you want a dog? Meaning you’re coming home? Or let’s see, Riverton Avenue—are you saying you miss the styles? Meaning you feel old today?”
“Zac—”
“Or maybe you’re bringing up Riverton to remind me of the traumatized ruin I was in the twenties. Maybe you’re letting me know you don’t want to hear anything inconvenient. I hope you’ve noticed I’m more careful about that these last couple decades.”
Her faint cry stopped him. His pulse was pounding in his ears. Adrenaline tingled in his fingers. Look at that, she could send him into fight-or-flight with a phone call. And shoot, he hadn’t meant to say that last part, hadn’t meant to bat at her with claws.
But this was what they did to each other now.
“I’m sorry.” He’d said it often enough today.
“No.”
No, he wasn’t sorry? No, he shouldn’t be sorry? She exhausted him. “Why did you call me?”
“I thought you wanted to hear from me.”
“I did.” Desperately, until a few minutes ago. “Just talk straight. Please. Tell me where you are and how you are.”
“That’s not why I called.”
She wouldn’t give him anything. He had to stop letting it hurt.
She made him wait half a quiet minute then said, “I saw something online yesterday. A picture. Of you.”
Curse that picture. He gritted his teeth.
“Some of your silly fangirls are saying it’s drugs, but of course I recognized …”
“Yeah.” He managed to say the word through his tension-locked jaw. “It was an attack.”
“In Galloway’s?”
“Yeah.” The shame burned in his face, in his stomach.
“But, Zachary, a public place like that. It’s been so long.”
Ah. Riverton Avenue. Blinding panic in the middle of the afternoon, a sunny day, at the market in town. Witnessed by the store clerk who had lowered the window shades to keep out the heat, not realizing how dark the store would become when the final shade went down. Zac’s scream had terrified the woman. In the middle of an aisle, Moira had held him through it, both of them huddled on the floor.
The behemoth had battered him so many times in the Riverton house. Different triggers, same response. Usually nights, Moira holding him through it, her tumbled brown curls against his bare chest, yet he had never told her what the others now knew.
“I’m working on it.”
“Does David know?”
He closed his eyes and tried to feel again the prayers of his friends. The care of his friends. A spill of warmth seeped into him. “Yeah. They’re really good to me.”
“They?”
“Tiana and David.”
“Good.”
The quiet pushed back in. He shifted in the seat. A phone connection didn’t allow him to sense if she was okay, but it was Moira, so he wouldn’t be able to anyway.
“I’m glad you called,” he said. “I guess you’re overseas somewhere.”
This silence was empty and arid.
“You might call Simon. Give him some peace of mind.”
“Oh.”
“We can’t just shut worry off, you know.” The way you can. He’d nearly said it.
“You need to learn.”
Yeah. Okay. He sighed.
“I’m …” The word seemed to choke her.
“Moira?”
“I’m not overseas, Zac.”
A clue. “Okay.”
“I—I feel like anything I tell you, he might find out and use against me. Against us.”
He. Zac grew cold. “Colm.”
“I’m not overseas,” she said, desperation in the repeating.
“That’s good.”
“I’m in Chicago.”
The cold gripped harder. “Why?”
“I had to see if he was coming back.”
Oh Moira. “We severed his brain from his body. We buried him in the ground, separate tarps, separate— You were there, you saw.”
“But we don’t die, Zachary. Perhaps Colm didn’t. Perhaps he dug himself out of the ground and went home to Chicago. To murder again. More mortals dead. And to come after us.”
“That’s not possible.”
“How do you know?”
His kept his breathing level as false sensory input flooded him. Buried alive. Dirt on the grave. “Moira, listen to me. Colm is dead. He can’t hurt you.”
“I know.”
What? “Good. You’re safe from him.”
“That is true, isn’t it?”
“It is.”
“I—I didn’t call for this. I called because I saw that picture, and I thought you might be in trouble.”
“I’m doing okay. And when I’m not, I’ve got support.”
Whether he wanted it or not. An image flashed in his mind, David and Tiana and Simon lined up between him and the behemoth, wearing armored vests and brandishing firearms. The image drew a smile.
When Moira wanted to know a thing, she asked. Telling her the deepest parts of himself didn’t feel safe anymore, but if she asked what had been happening to him, what the family was doing to help … If she said something to contradict her old words …
“I’m glad to know that.” Calmness cloaked her voice again as if it had never slipped from her.
So the subject was finished. Okay.
“How long are you staying in Chicago?” he said.
“Until I’m satisfied.”
“And then what?”
“I haven’t decided.”
He ought to tell her to come home. When she asked where he meant, he ought to say her home was all of them—Simon, David, himself—not a place. And lo
ok, here they were in one little town. Just come home to us, Moira, and we’ll turn a new corner, get on with life and stop hearing Colm’s voice in our heads.
She wouldn’t listen. But that wasn’t the reason he didn’t say it.
“We don’t have anything left to say to each other, do we, Zac?”
How many times he’d rehearsed this phone call. But no script would ever do Moira justice.
“I do have one thing,” he said. Her silence didn’t justify his. “I’m sorry.”
“You? For what?” The words held a mockery that might be forced. He hoped it was anyway.
“I didn’t protect you from him.”
She made a scoffing sound. “You didn’t know what he was.”
“And I’m sorry for that too.”
“He was a psychopath, Zac. He mimicked normal flawlessly. No one but a mind-reader could have seen through it.”
Which was why she should have told him. Seventy years ago, she should have told him.
“He was bored, you know.”
Zac’s fingers were freezing to the phone, starting to cramp. “What?”
“The kills were losing their luster, so he created the story he told me. My fear became his new hobby.”
He leaned his forehead on the steering wheel and fought the urge to punch out the car window. Seventy years of fear. “Moira.”
“This isn’t why I called either.”
“No, but I’m sorry. I hope you’ll forgive me.”
“I need to go.”
“All right. Take care.”
“Likewise.” A long pause during which he thought she’d hung up. Then, quiet and hard, “You’ve gone back to God.”
He blinked. “I have.”
“I always knew you would. You took longer with it than I expected.”
He had no idea what to say to that.
“Goodbye, Zac.”
Now the dial tone. He checked the incoming number; it was an Illinois exchange all right. And it was a burner. He knew that the way he knew all her old names, the shape of the birthmark on the small of her back, the girlish sparkle and grin that happened to her face when she was painting. The way he knew she would call him again though he didn’t know when—a day, a week, a month, a year.
He drove home, aching, pondering. Not once had he wished he could hold her.
THIRTY-SIX
He’d forgotten takeout tacos. He’d forgotten to respond to Simon’s text. Moira’s call had burrowed under his skin and latched on with teeth, and the deepest bite was the last thing he had expected. Colm. As he drove, the muscles in his legs grew twitchy.
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