That’s as good an opening as he’s going to get. Panic fills me as Andrew puts his hand on mine and says, “I completely agree.”
No, I want to tell Andrew, but I choke back the words. Don’t show them you have feelings. They’ll think you’re an easy target.
My father raises his eyebrows, and my mother looks away with a little smirk.
I wince and he lets go, withdrawing.
I’m not like my mother and father. I want your love. I recapture his hand. “We had a lovely wedding.”
And it was.
Just Andrew and Emma and me. I wore a white summer sundress and gold strappy sandals and so did Emma. I had painted our toenails so they sparkled silver, and we spun and twirled to make our skirts flare. Andrew wore a suit, but he had a boutonniere of white clover blossoms and a fading sunburn across his nose from the day trip to Galveston where he’d proposed. Less than a week later we were married at a walk-up wedding chapel in downtown Houston. I twined my fingers with Andrew’s, certain I had found my real family at last. I know it’s a cliché co-opted by every Hallmark anniversary card and date-night romcom, but that was the happiest day of my life.
Maybe Andrew isn’t appalled by who my parents are, because he gives my hand a squeeze, leans in, and kisses my temple.
Emma has been concentrating on her cut-up buttered linguine, chasing each diced pasta piece one by one around her plate. Now she looks up. “I threw the flowers.”
“The flower girl.” My mother nods slowly. “And Zoe is your new mama?”
Now Emma looks uncertain. “Who’s Zoe?”
“Right there.” My mother points at me.
The look on Emma’s face breaks my heart. She is lost and I am turning into a stranger in front of her.
I want to throw myself between her and my mother. Instead I put my arm around her, pulling her close into my side to whisper, “My mother calls me Zoe, but you call me Lizzie.” She ducks her head against me.
“Ah.” My mother nods as if she is just remembering. “Lizzie. So Lizzie is your mother now.” Bitch. She turns her attention to Andrew. “How did she find you?”
“We met each other online. A dating site.” Andrew emphasizes the “we,” and I feel renewed hope. Maybe just this once, my mother won’t make everything worse. Maybe this will make Andrew forgive me, even if I don’t deserve it. He is too smart to volunteer information, but he is also too polite to end the conversation.
Mom is undeterred. “What happened with your wife? Emma’s mother, I mean.”
“Preeclampsia.”
My mother nods thoughtfully, then glances at my father. He stops the mechanical rise and fall of his fork. “That must have left you very vulnerable. How long after her passing did Zoe meet you?”
My chest constricts, and rage starts bubbling inside me.
“Two years,” Andrew tells him. Actually, a year and a half, but I have my lips pressed tightly together. Andrew can do all the talking. Anything I say will definitely be used against me.
My parents look at each other. “Textbook,” my mother says.
And I can feel my husband pull away from me slightly.
As we get up from the table to go home, Andrew and I fall back a few steps.
I have to tell him I love him, that meeting him wasn’t a trick or a trap. I push down the frantic need to make sure he still loves me after all. After them.
Instead I say, “I’m sorry you had to go through that.” All the things I am afraid to add run through my head. Please don’t leave me. Please forgive me. I’ll be good, I swear.
Ahead of us, Emma is twirling around, her skirt a pink-and-silver blur. My father gives her a wide berth. My mother doesn’t veer aside, striding closer and closer until Emma stumbles and stops.
Andrew doesn’t see this. His eyes search my face. “Well, you’re a lot like them, aren’t you? It’s not easy for you to talk about your feelings.”
The pain is as strong as a physical punch. How can he think that? I love him. I love Emma. My parents love nothing, maybe not even each other. “I’m nothing like them.”
“Hey.” He reaches out for me, pulls me close. “I’m on your side. You don’t have to be so careful.”
I don’t understand.
He kisses my forehead and pulls back to look into my eyes. “That conversation at dinner was intense. But you don’t have to be on your guard with me. I love you. We’re a team, no matter what your parents try to do.”
I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding, and with it goes the tension from my muscles, braced for impact, now flooded with warm relief.
My mother pulls the heavy restaurant door open and looks back. “Are you coming, Zoe?”
And Emma stops her twirling and stares at me imperiously. “Are you coming, Zoe?”
The words fall out. “I’m staying with Andrew tonight.” I glance up at him, and thank God he’s smiling.
He reaches out a hand for our daughter as he says, “Come on, Emma. Lizzie will sing your bedtime song tonight.”
In the rental car, the darkened streets and Emma’s presence in the back seat keep me quiet. Andrew navigates the roads as though he’s done it a million times. No GPS. He seems to have an internal navigation system. “Is there anyone you want to see while you’re here?” he asks. “Any friends? Any friends of Ava’s?”
“No. Not now.” I am not finished mulling over the dinner. My frustration, my anger, and my fear make it hard to remember every detail clearly. I lean my forehead against the window.
No friends in my own hometown. That’s strange. I cast my mind back and dredge up a few faces, a few names. The guy I went to prom with. Tom? A girl with spiky blue hair from drama class. And did I ever see Ava with friends? We never had people over to our house.
As we pause at a traffic light, I try harder, and something surfaces in my memory. A table in our high school library. Before homeroom, all the students milled around the cafeteria, filling that holding pen with noise and stink and shoving. A few of us who didn’t have anyone to sit with at lunch learned to slip up the back stairs, and the librarian would let us in, as long as we were quiet. The faces are blurry now and the names are lost, but that was the place I felt safest.
Now Andrew is passing me the ticket from the parking garage, and we pull into a spot and pile into the hotel. With three of us in the one room, especially with Emma, there is blessedly little space for thinking or remembering or wondering. Andrew plugs in his phone and brushes his teeth, while I sing Emma “Here Comes the Sun.” As I croon, I wish fiercely, desperately for the words to come true. Just let everything be all right now.
This feeling of family, right after the meal with my parents, is making me feel very homesick. When Andrew stood by me, when he acknowledged that my parents were aggressively insensitive, I felt the loss of something I never realized they owed me. Now I put a name to it.
My sister. Ava and I should have had friends. More than that, we should have been friends. But they treated us like rival nations. There was no “teamwork,” no “our girls,” no “you kids.” It was always me against her, not us against them.
So years later, when Andrew mentioned us maybe trying for a child, I felt my whole body recoil. Of course he noticed. “Don’t you want more children?” he asked. And I covered. “No, no, I want more children. I just want to make sure Emma is ready. We don’t want to move too quickly.” And that seemed to be the right answer.
But the truth is, I would never do that to Emma. Better for her to be our “one and only” than for me to make her an “either/or.” Now I wonder if I could change. If I could still have a family, a real one.
I spend the night with Andrew and Emma in the hotel. And lying in the king-sized bed in that anonymous room without a single personal belonging except my shoulder bag, I still feel more at home than I ever have at my parents’ house.
Fuck where Ava is.
In the morning, I’m going home.
CHAPTER
22
<
br /> ZOE
I WAKE WITH A start. Emma is practically nose to nose with me and her eyes are open, as if she has been waiting for just this moment. Loudly she whispers, “I’m hungry, Lizzie. And Daddy is sleeping.”
Andrew answers from deep in his pillow. “Not anymore.”
In the hallway I can hear other hotel guests—families like us—making their way to the elevator, their voices hushed and cheerful, their luggage bumping along. I am full of good feelings—love and gratitude for Andrew’s forgiveness. “Go back to sleep,” I tell him. “Emma and I can find breakfast.”
Giggling and whispering, Emma and I get dressed, she in a fresh outfit, me in yesterday’s clothes.
As Emma punches the elevator button, it occurs to me that there might be a television in the lobby. I don’t want to see more about Ava on the news. But the doors are sliding closed and Emma grabs my hand, bracing herself for the downward motion.
In the breakfast area, my eyes go right to the television in the corner of the room. By the grace of God it’s set on the Weather Channel. If we eat and get out quickly, all will be well.
Between the canisters of bright-colored cereal, the breakfast pastries, and the industrial-sized toaster, Emma is in heaven. We never buy sugary cereal or doughnuts, and she’s so excited that she doesn’t know what to choose. I get her settled with a bowl of neon crunchies and a banana, which she manages to eat in a way that suggests she’s just humoring me.
I make sure she sits with her back to the television. Just in case.
The entire room has only five small tables, so I’m just two steps away from her, making my own breakfast. I send a bagel through the toaster while filling a paper cup with coffee.
When I turn back to check on Emma, there’s a woman standing by our table, whispering in her ear. A young woman with a sleek black ponytail and wire-framed glasses. Too close to my Emma. Her counterpart, a hipster guy with a bushy beard and seventies-style plaid jacket, waits by the doorway. Strangers. They could be saying anything, they could be ready to snatch her.
My bagel drops onto the toaster’s metal tray, but I ignore it in my haste. No one will take her away.
Leaning over Emma, I set my coffee down forcefully. “What do you want?”
The woman straightens up. “Hi, you must be Zoe.” She makes the “hi” into two syllables and my name into one that rhymes with “go.”
I ignore her and reach my hand out for Emma. “All done, baby?”
Emma protests. “No, I’m not finished.” One hand clenches her cereal bowl, and I can see she won’t leave without a fuss.
Undeterred, the woman continues, “I’m Sue Solcedo. Maybe you’ve heard my podcast, Real Time Mysteries?”
I pull Emma closer to me. This bitch needs to stay away from my kid. Glancing around the breakfast room, I note that the only witnesses are an old guy hunched over a paper and Sue’s backup in the doorway.
“Look, we’re just trying to eat breakfast. Leave us alone.” As I talk, my voice gets thinner and higher. I wish I hadn’t put milk in Emma’s cereal, wish I could scoop her up with her breakfast and flee back to the hotel room.
Sue doesn’t give up. “I’m just looking into the disappearance of your sister, and I wanted to talk to you. Give you a chance to get on the record.”
“Leave us alone. I’ll call the manager.”
“Given what’s been reported in the news today, you can see why people might think you were involved.” And she pulls out a folded section of newspaper from her shoulder bag and sets it on the table in front of me.
I can’t help it—I look at the newspaper. There in print are the emails. The threatening emails from my computer. From my account. Right there for everyone to read.
My hand moves convulsively and I spill my coffee. Not over Sue, unfortunately, but across the table. Emma cries out and I stagger to my feet. But before I can grab more napkins or ice water, the bearded guy is there with a handkerchief. I snatch it from him and mop Emma off. Thankfully, the coffee hit only her sleeve, not her bare skin. She isn’t burned. She will be fine. But my stomach keeps pitching and rolling. Where did these come from? Why haven’t the police called me again?
Sue seizes her moment, unfolding the paper and holding it out to me. “You can see how bad this looks for you. Don’t you want to tell your side?”
I hear the unspoken warning: while you still can.
I look closer. There’s a photo, right below the crease of the paper. A picture of me. And Glenn. In front of the house. Yesterday.
He’s holding me by the shoulders, and his back is to the camera. I know he’s shouting at me, but from my expression in the picture he could be pleading with me, promising things to me, threatening me. I feel dizzy. We look like coconspirators. And someone was secretly filming us. Filming me. The hairs on the back of my neck prickle.
I have to get back to the room. I have to talk to Andrew. “Okay, baby, two-minute warning. Choose a special doughnut,” I tell Emma. While she races to the breakfast table, I stand up.
Sue stands too. Her makeup is carefully applied, from her crimson lips to mascara that makes her eyes look wide, trustworthy. But I’m from Texas. I know makeup is an art designed to help you project an image. She may look professional and approachable, but I notice that nothing about her is out of place. Small, tasteful silver hoops in her ears, crisp shirt, trim blazer. She’s all about the details, and now she’s using them against me.
She keeps her eyes on my face, like she’s trying to will me into talking to her. “Please, I just want the truth. Anything you can tell me. Your story.”
Emma comes back with a pink frosted doughnut in one hand, and I grab her by the other, striding to the door. The bearded guy and Sue are following me, but I refuse to look back.
All the things I want to say bubble up. Bitch says she wants my story. Like hell she does. She just wants the story Ava created. My sister dropped off the radar and I get to be the villain. If Sue needs a bad guy, why not Glenn? He looks like the cheating husband. But I’m not going to say that. I don’t owe anyone an explanation. Not Ava, not this Sarah Koenig wannabe.
We’re storming through the hotel now, a strange little parade. At the end of the hallway, a woman waits outside the elevator with a toddler in her arms while her husband wrestles with the luggage.
Sue shouts, “Is it true that you and Glenn—”
“Fuck off!”
The couple at the end of the hall whip around like they’ve heard a gunshot. Even their little boy is bug-eyed.
Emma gives a cry of pain, and I realize I’ve clenched her hand so tightly that I’m hurting her. She can’t keep up and she can’t pull free.
I scoop Emma up into my arms, whispering, “I’m sorry, baby. I’m so sorry,” and break into a run. Pushing through the family, ignoring their gasps, I barrel into the elevator with Emma just as the doors close.
I set her down and sink to my knees. “Let me see your arm, honey. Are you all right?”
There are tears in her eyes and she is holding one shoulder protectively. “You hurt me. And you yelled.”
“Not at you, baby. Not at you.” I run my shaking hands from her neck over her shoulders and down her arms. She doesn’t protest, and I am almost certain she was hurt but not injured.
She looks down, and I see that her doughnut has been squished, the frosting oozing out from between her fingers. A lesser child would have wailed again, louder, but Emma raises her hand to her lips and eats the sugary mess anyway.
My rib cage is like a corset squeezing tighter and tighter. I hurt Emma. I scared her, I cursed in front of her, I ruined her breakfast, I made her cry. Now there are tears in my eyes. I am choking on self-hatred.
All too quickly the doors ding open, but not at our floor. And of course there are people in the hallway waiting for the elevator. An older man with a tweedy sport jacket and a folded-up newspaper in one hand. He doesn’t look pleased to find Emma and me hunched on the floor of the elevator. He is f
ollowed by a trio of teenage girls in pastel sweat pants and athletic T-shirts.
My heart pounds as I scan the hall, but there is no sign of Sue or the guy with the beard. The elderly man gives me a sharp look and pulls the newspaper out from under his arm. He’s recognized me. I know it.
One of the girls asks Emma, “Did you get that doughnut downstairs? I want a pink one too.”
As we get out and the elevator doors slide shut, I hear the girls teasing each other about rainbow doughnuts. Emma would be better off with any one of those cheerful teens than she is with me.
My private emails and my personal history are in the paper. Someone wants to frame me. And judging by that photo, I’ve been helping them right along.
CHAPTER
23
ZOE
I WAVE THE KEY card and push the door open. Andrew is sitting on the end of the bed, watching television, a news channel with a red banner running across the bottom. And the photo, the one of me and Glenn.
He looks up as we enter, his eyes wide with disbelief. My stomach drops. He knows. About the emails, the affair with Glenn, everything. I’m a lying liar who stole my sister’s husband.
Softly, too softly, my husband says, “You were really involved with him. It was serious.”
There’s an ache in my throat. I want to deny it, but I can’t. What could I say? I told Andrew about the emails and my old identity, I even told him I “dated” Glenn, but I never told him everything.
How could I tell him? Glenn and I never dated, not really. There were no ice cream floats or shared popcorn at the movies. All we had was sex. How could I tell Andrew about the first time Glenn and I were alone in my crappy little apartment? He had one foot out the door until I untied the straps of my sundress and let it fall. Then he looked at me, came close, and put his arms around me. I felt powerful, desired. I felt like Ava. But I didn’t have the kind of relationship with Glenn that she must have had. He and I never really talked. No shared secrets, no plans for the future. Just sweat and teeth and sex. I marked him as mine, over and over.
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