by A. M. Geever
“No,” Mario said. “No. She wouldn’t do that.”
“Emily is not as fragile as you think.”
“She wouldn’t do that, Doug,” Mario said, anger in his voice now. “She wouldn’t put the boys in danger unless she wasn’t right.” He stood up, swaying. “I need to get back to the boys and see if Doc has finished examining Em.”
Doug stood, too. “I’m not wrong, Mario. I know I’m not.”
Mario glared at him, a fierce protectiveness flaring in his eyes. “I don’t want to hear this! This is my fault, not Emily’s. Don’t ever say that about her again.”
Doug shook his head. If Mario didn’t want to hear it, he didn’t want to hear it. He should let it go, but couldn’t seem to help himself.
“Are you going to break up with Miranda?”
The fierceness drained away, leaving nothing but a swirl of guilt and Mario’s ever-present fear of losing Miranda on her next expedition in its wake. Doug wished he’d kept his mouth shut.
“No,” Mario said softly, looking both surprised, and like he hated himself for how quickly he answered Doug’s question. He looked at Doug for a moment more, fear and pain and most of all guilt hovering in the air between them. “I have to go.”
Doug watched Mario leave, more convinced with every passing second that he was right, that this had been a methodical, intentional move on Emily’s part, not a desperate cry for help. In the heat of the moment, even Doug had forgotten that the chance of there being zombies outside the Lafayette Gate this morning were almost nil. He’d been part of the reason why they’d moved off in the first place, yet it was instinct that had kicked in, not his intellect. When Mario had seen his family out there, instinct would have been the only thing to kick in.
The whole situation was dreadful, Doug got that. Could Emily regress in the face of such a stressor? Doug had to concede it was possible but…it didn’t play. The look on her face as Mario pulled her along with him to get back inside had been almost serene. Doug thought about it more… Not serene, he realized, but triumphant. She hadn’t looked zoned out or unaware or in shock. She’d looked like a woman who was getting exactly what she wanted.
Doug had seen Emily take on things that would have made her crumple before. And he’d seen her scheme to make things go the way she wanted. Not in a bad way, never at the expense of anyone else, but it signified a resourcefulness that Mario clearly wasn’t aware of, or just couldn’t see. Maybe she still thought she needed him to function, but Doug hadn’t thought so for a while now. It was clear she wasn’t in love with Mario. They got along well enough, and she cared about him, but that was as far as it went. Emily had decided she could live with her husband being in love, being with, Miranda, so long as he didn’t leave, but Mario had threatened to upend everything. While Doug could sympathize, it pissed him off to think she’d do something so foolhardy—so cruel—and use innocent children to do it.
The tangled, enmeshed relationships, and the wildly diverging wants and needs behind them, all of it was totally fucked up and corrosive. Life after zombies seemed to have more than its fair share of fuck up-ed-ness. Miranda and Mario made it even more so by feeling responsible for Emily’s grip on reality. Emily had desperately needed Mario in order to cope once; maybe believed she still did, but Doug did not buy that she would kill her children. Even if he was wrong about the rest, she’d never hurt her children. She wasn’t psychotic. She wasn’t postpartum. She wasn’t even especially unhinged by today’s standards. And Mario hadn’t told Miranda he was planning to leave Emily because Miranda would have flipped. Mario staying with Emily was the only big thing that he’d ever seen them fight about.
Doug watched Mario go, incredulous that Mario couldn’t see it, even though he understood why.
“You’re not leaving Miranda,” he had said softly to the empty room. “But you’re not leaving Emily, either.”
Skye said, “Holy shit. Did she really plan it to manipulate him? Like, did she tell you later in confession or something?”
“No!” Doug said, shocked, and much louder than he meant to. He lowered his voice. “Of course not! I’d never reveal anything a person confessed. Jesus, Skye. I can’t believe you even suggested it.”
Skye snickered, then started to giggle. “Are you kidding me?”
“What?” Doug demanded, still utterly scandalized.
“Technically, you’re still a priest and that hasn’t stopped you from sleeping with me—a lot.”
“That’s not the same thing, Skye. At all.”
Doug could feel her body shaking with suppressed laughter.
“I mean, it’s frowned upon. Obviously,” he said, beginning to feel ridiculous that he was even arguing this, but Skye wasn’t Catholic. Confession wasn’t something she was familiar with. “Confession is a whole other thing. You just don’t, no matter how much you fall down in other areas.”
Skye’s giggling took a while to subside, and it took all of Doug’s willpower not to kiss her. She was so outrageously cute while she laughed at him. Even in this minuscule bit of light he could see, or imagined that he could, the sparkle in her eyes, the pucker of her lips. The way her body shook with barely suppressed laughter as she tried and failed to pull herself together had him almost panting, thinking of how her body quaked when she came, and how much he wanted to go down on her right now and make that happen. But if he kissed her, he wouldn’t want to stop.
Just like betraying the seal of confession, screwing on watch was something you just didn’t do.
“So,” Skye finally said, the giggles almost gone. “If she’s never told you, how are you so sure?”
“It came up once, when it was just the two of us, right after Maureen was born. I’d told her I was happy she was still here because we’d have missed out on this gorgeous little baby, and she said, ‘I’m not stupid, Doug. I knew we’d be okay.’”
Skye whistled. “Damn. That’s cold.”
“When she realized what she’d said, she backtracked immediately, but I could see it in her eyes. She’d never felt in danger, even though it could have gone terribly wrong. She looked like she felt bad about it, but—” He shrugged. “It was almost two years later. Mario had already pretended to side with the Council so we could try to get the vaccine back. Miranda wanted nothing to do with him, and had finally quit doing her damndest to drink herself stupid twenty-four seven.”
“And they stayed married?”
“They’re still married. I mean, what were they going to do? It was what Emily wanted, and Mario was more convinced than ever that if he left her, she’d take the Express Bus to Cuckooville.” Doug’s voice trailed as he thought, because he’d never put it into words before. He wanted to get it right. “When he decided to stay in his marriage, it was never a question of choosing Emily over Miri. You’ve seen them; he was so in love with Miranda… He wasn’t going to give her up. But he stopped letting himself want the kind of life he wanted with her. He was going to do right by Emily as far as he could, but things between them changed. His expectations shifted—priorities, too. It’s not that it became an arrangement between them, but it felt that way for quite a while.”
“But they had another child.”
“Yeah, well, six months later we had the vaccine and then everything blew up. When he ‘defected,’ Mario and Emily had to leave SCU. They went to Palo Alto, where the real power players on the Council lived. They were on their own. When it came down to who they could really trust, they only had each other. It’s not surprising they grew closer again. They actually care about one another, and they’ve got the kids. If you didn’t know all the history, you’d never know looking in from the outside that their marriage is as screwy as it is.”
After a moment, Skye said, “I can totally see Rocco doing something like that. Staying, I mean. It’s that old-school Italian thing.”
Doug nodded. She had summarized Mario’s motivations better than he’d ever been able to. “But you can’t count on getting a second chance. Would he let t
he one he loved slip past him?”
“Like me, you mean?” Skye teased.
Doug’s heart swelled with love for her until it ached. “Definitely like you,” he said softly.
He reached for her, and this time he did kiss her. The head rush of desire hit him like a train. Their kiss deepened, heat exploding between them. His hands slipped inside her shirt. He shoved her bra up, cupping her soft, yielding breasts. Her nipples were already hard and she gasped into his mouth as he caressed them.
Skye broke the kiss, her breathing fast and shallow. Even though all they had was moonlight, he could see the blush of color in her cheeks.
“You know we can’t,” she said, breathless.
Doug groaned, his forehead resting on hers. “I know.”
She whimpered, for his thumbs continued to caress her erect nipples. They were so stiff…he would swear to God they beat in time with her pulse. And the way she was whimpering… Christ Almighty, he wanted to fuck her so bad. He forced himself to stop, though he wanted to keep moving his hands on her body, listen to her whimper and gasp and groan, dive into her like she was cool water on a sweltering day.
“I’d have been a fool to let you get away, but being on this fucking watch is killing me.”
“Me too,” she said, still a little breathless. “But—”
“I know,” Doug grumbled. “I know…fucking zombies.”
Skye grinned as she rearranged herself back into her bra. Doug stood up to adjust his pants around the raging hard-on he now had.
Skye said, “Mario really doesn’t suspect? Is he afraid she might lose it?”
“I don’t think he’s afraid she’ll hurt the kids. More that she won’t be able to cope. And now… He can’t seem to reconcile that he let Emily down in a way he never thought he would, by leaving them all behind, I mean. It feeds into this…” He cast about for the right word. “Misconception he has about her still being fragile and helpless. It’s a blind spot. He just can’t see it.”
“And Miranda really doesn’t know?”
Doug smiled at the skepticism in Skye’s voice. “You’d be amazed how well priests can scheme. And part of it was luck. That kind of thing could have caused division in the community that we couldn’t afford. Everyone on watch that morning understood that.”
He raised his arms above his head and stretched, trying to dispel some of the nervous energy the all-too-brief make-out session had generated. It didn’t help much.
“The people who knew didn’t want to tar Emily with that brush,” he continued. “She and Mario might have had a failing, fucked-up marriage, but if it got out, she would always be the crazy lady who took her kids outside the walls. She didn’t deserve that, no matter what she may have done. She really is a lovely person. She’s just damaged, like everyone else.”
Skye held out a hand and pulled him back beside her. She snuggled close and lay her head on his shoulder. He was relieved to have told her. He’d never shared the story with anyone, and had never realized how heavy it was.
“He was afraid Miranda would break it off. That’s why he didn’t want her to know?”
Doug sighed as he stroked Skye’s silky hair. “I’m sure that’s part of it, but honestly? I think it’s because she’s the mother of his children, and he’s still protecting her.”
16
The plume of dust below, followed by the crunch of the Tesla’s tires in the driveway, lifted Mario’s head. A moment later, Tessa and Doug drove into view, the smiles on their faces triumphant. The Tesla had passed the test drive. Mario felt a grin spread across his face. Finally, they were ready to go. He walked over to greet them as the SUV came to a halt.
“Wanna ride?” Tessa asked through the open driver’s side window.
“Definitely,” Mario answered.
Doug rounded the SUV as Tessa’s door opened. “She’s an electrical genius, and Skye’s a mechanical one.”
“You’ve got about ten years to stop with the praise,” Tessa said, her voice dripping with pleasure. She squinted in the bright sunshine as she looked around. “Where are Skye and the kids?”
“In the breezeway, I think,” said Mario. “I’ll go get them.”
He walked around the front of the house. Mario could feel the soft breeze from the open breezeway before he started up the steps. Skye sat with one of the children on either side of her, reading from the battered copy of Little House on the Prairie. Violet had Mister Bun Bun, who looked asleep, in her lap. Absently, she stroked his soft fur. Silas looked at him warily as he approached.
“They’re back,” Mario said.
“Yeah?” Skye asked, a grin splitting her face.
“Tessa says we’re ready to go.”
Violet squealed as she picked up Mister Bun Bun and jumped to her feet. “I wanna see!”
“Wait for me, Violet,” Skye said. “Mister Bun Bun needs to go into his playpen.”
Violet complied reluctantly. Silas stood, looking solemn while he waited. Mario’s heart felt like it was sinking into his shoes. Skye barely had time to snag Violet’s hand once Mister Bun Bun was in the playpen.
“Come on, Silas,” said Violet.
“Actually, I was hoping I could talk to Silas for a minute,” Mario said. He looked to Silas. “If that’s okay with you.”
Silas shrugged. Skye gave Mario an encouraging smile, then left with Violet, whose high-pitched voice squealed with excitement as they walked around the corner of the house. Mario walked the remaining two steps up to the breezeway and sat down in the open section next to where Silas stood.
“Sit down?” Mario asked him, patting the spot beside him.
Silas looked at him a moment, his dark eyes peeking out from below his downcast, furrowed brow, and shrugged again.
“That’s okay, you don’t have to,” Mario said. “I owe you an apology, Silas. I was a real jerk yesterday, and it had nothing to do with you. I am so sorry that I hurt your feelings, or if I scared you.”
Silas mumbled something Mario couldn’t quite catch.
“What’s that?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Silas muttered. “You’re not my dad.”
The metaphorical knife plunged into Mario’s heart and twisted. Painfully.
“I’m not your dad, but I like taking care of you. And I really like being with you.”
“Then why are you so mean sometimes?” Silas said angrily. “You shouldn’t be mean. Especially to Violet.”
“Or to you.” Mario took a moment to gather his thoughts. “You know how sometimes things are really hard? So hard you just want to fight and yell and kick things?”
Silas gave him a grudging nod, which was more than Mario had expected.
“Things have been really hard for me lately, and I haven’t been dealing with it very well. I’ve been acting like a jerk sometimes and that’s because of me. It’s nothing you did.”
“Doug said it’s because you’re sad.”
Mario nodded. “Yeah. I’ve been sad about things that happened before I met you.”
Silas’ body language loosened and relaxed. The furrowed brow smoothed. He sat down next to Mario.
“What’s making you sad?”
Mario almost laughed, because if he was better at dealing with his feelings about everything that had happened, then he wouldn’t have an earnest eight-year-old inquiring about the state of his interior life. He took a deep breath.
“My girlfriend and I were going to have a baby, but…sometimes it doesn’t work out, and we lost him.”
“Did she have the baby too soon? Mama had a baby too soon, and she was never even alive.”
Mario nodded, a dull ache making his throat feel tight. Partly because of Miranda and Tadpole, and partly because Silas’ first mention of his mother since they’d found him and Violet involved death and loss.
“Something like that. It makes me really sad, because I really wanted to be his dad.”
“Where’s your girlfriend?”
“She didn’
t come with us. She got really sad, too, and broke up with me.”
“Oh.” Silas seemed to digest this information for a moment, then said, “Mama used to get sad after…after Devon died.”
“Was Devon your brother?”
Silas shook his head. “Her boyfriend. He was nice.”
“I’m sorry, Silas. It sounds like you liked him. Having nice people with you is really important.”
“Yeah,” Silas whispered, the expression on his face faraway, as if he was seeing something he didn’t like. Then his face cleared and he looked up to Mario. “I think you’re nice, when you’re not—”
He stopped speaking abruptly, and his eyes went wide. He looked at Mario guiltily.
“When I’m not being a jerk?” Mario said, smiling.
A grin tugged on the corner of Silas’ mouth. “Yeah,” he said, beginning to laugh.
“I think you’re nice, Silas,” Mario said, blinking back the tears that had sprung to his eyes. “Violet, too. I’ll try not to be a jerk. And if you think I’m heading that direction, you can tell me. Or you can tell someone else and they can tell me. Deal?”
He held out his hand, but Silas didn’t take it. Instead, he wrapped his thin arms around Mario’s neck. Mario pulled Silas to him and gave him a squeeze.
“Deal,” Silas said.
His hold on Mario’s neck loosened after a few moments, so Mario reluctantly broke the embrace. He wanted to hold Silas tight, this quirky, little person whose need for protection—for love—had made him feel like a father again. A good one, instead of the guy who kept doing the wrong thing.
“I want to see the Tesla, Mario. And I want to sit by the window.”
Mario smiled. “Then let’s go see it.”
Silas skipped down the steps, waiting for Mario close up the breezeway. When he reached Silas, Mario held out his hand. Silas took it.
“And I want to find a bike,” Silas said. “There must be one somewhere.”
“There are definitely bikes somewhere,” Mario said as they walked around the corner of the house. “We’ll get you one. I promise.”