Chapter Seventeen

Zoe

"Z oe Beatrice!"

Rosario cries in joy, pulling me inside her hug. She once was a few inches taller than me, but age has leveled her to my height. The fierceness of her arms hasn't wavered, though.

I rang the bell, not necessarily because I feel like the key I still own no longer belongs to me, but for the surprise effect. To be fair, I always rang, yet it never failed to surprise her. Perhaps evidence of the rarity of my visits.

"Mi ni?a. You don't come here often enough," she echoes my thoughts.

"I've survived great dangers, Rosie, but I might succumb to your hugs."

"Ay." She squeezes me harder. "Don't say those things."

She pulls away to hold me at arms-length and scrutinize me. I'm kind enough to reciprocate. Under white attire, her swarthy skin glows the same golden hue that reminds me of the warmth of a sunset in the late afternoon. Wrinkles paint her face, but the seasons would never cover the spark of care in her chocolate irises.

Inspection concluded, she clucks her tongue. "Come in, come in. Let's get you something to eat. You're too thin." My mouth opens with a retort, and immediately clamps shut. I know better than to interrupt when her hands come to her waist. "Before you start lecturing me on my commentary about other people's bodies and your blah-blah-blah, I'm worried about your health. I know how careless you are about your meals."

After clicking the door closed, she whirls and laces her arm with mine, guiding me through carpeted corridors to her domain. Her step hasn't suffered as she approaches six decades, as swift and steady as twenty years before.

"Actually, I was going to say I've gained a couple pounds since—" Since I (practically) moved in with Miles, I was about to say. "The incident."

"Well, they must be skilled at hide and seek. I don't see them."

My cheeks hitch with the beginnings of a smile, but for the sake of our mock argument, I don't let it unfold.

"Sit." As soon as we arrive at her kitchen, Rosario ushers me towards a stool. "How is that handsome man of yours? You don't bring him around enough, either."

"I'm not sure he's a dog I can just bring around at my will, Rosie."

The lid of the serving stand clunks against the countertop, a large slice of her delight of the day in front of me in no time.

Her fingers don't relent their grip on the plate until she finishes her statement. "A man in love is the closest thing to a puppy."

I can't contain the undignified snort that escapes me. I glance over my shoulder, making sure Mom isn't around. "Wouldn't want you questioning his intentions."

"I don't have to question him to know all his intentions, mi ni?a." The tilt of my head implies a question she answers with a pat on my arm, like I'm a clueless child. "Eat."

"Your persistence is as admirable as it is exasperating." I huff, digging in anyway.

It's divine, my moan attests.

"Zoe." Mother makes her arrival known. "Perhaps do not use your talent of insulting compliments on Rosario."

"It's not a talent. It's an art I've mastered."

"Well." Mom pulls the seat to my left side, folding her hands on the quartz island. "Own them."

With a hum, I spin on the stool to point the fork at the subject of my insult. "Rosario, you're annoying. Your cake is amazing, though."

Her good-hearted laugh ricochets against the red mahogany cabinets as she stretches her toes to grab more dessert plates. She positions a perfect piece in front of my mom, retracing her steps to her small slice on the other side, where she remains standing.

Much like herself, Mom takes her opportunity to steer the conversation in her preferred direction. "How are you, darling?"

I don't hesitate. "Bored."

I stepped back temporarily from my job, strongly advised to minimize exposure as the investigation unfolds. In reality, I was pressured to leave by all parties, my responsibilities reduced to remote work as a compromise.

Brown eyes soften with understanding. "How's the investigation going? "

With a raised eyebrow, I volley her question back. "I could ask you the same, Mother."

As a judge in the highest court of Massachusetts, she has contacts, and thus access, to privileged information that I can't fathom.

With her sigh comes the answer I expected.

Nothing.

The investigation halted early. How a person can vanish into thin air is beyond my comprehension—yet that's what happened, by all accounts.

Lucy whatever-last-name is a ghost.

Meanwhile, I'm well on my way towards madness.

With so much free time on my hands, there's no room for avoidance anymore. I've fallen down the rabbit hole of social media, faced with the implications and complications of this game of deception and destruction as they finally catch up to me.

Brazen blind hate from hordes of faceless icons floods my accounts with in-depth analyses of my suitability to be the princess of Miles's fairy tale, breaking down my appearance, status, wealth, and Lord knows what else. I had anticipated repercussions—hatred is the backbone of society, after all—and I'm not foolish enough to believe such concepts were left in the last century.

The beauty of our times is they're timeless. Just like misogyny.

Yet no amount of awareness and preparation could prevent the impact.

A little or a lot, pain is pain. And it hurts.

It hurts, as much as I tell myself it shouldn't. Reading all the ways I fall short, all the reasons I can never be enough—and I masochistically gobble it up like I'm thirsty for punishment.

The wave of judgment receded as weeks went by, only to resurface with the force of a tsunami. In face of my sudden mysterious disappearance from the screens, Miles and I are the hot topic again, as the public jumps to conclusions that don't favor me.

How much worse will it be when the inevitable breakup is announced? I'll no longer be the gold-digger girlfriend, just another poor little girl who so naively thought she could have it all. The tiny journalist who wasn't enough for the star of the national team.

And in that future, Miles will be confined to my past.

I'll look back and remember him coming home hours after practice with fresh groceries to cook dinner for us, some days carrying flowers, some days chocolates or candy, some days new books; all while I'm busy eating his food and overthinking—replaying every interaction from the very first one, struggling to reconcile the man I've been getting to know with the image I had in my head.

I need him to remain the villain, now more than before, or I'll never be able to walk away unscathed—it's selfishness as much as self-preservation—but that's become an herculean task in which I don't think I want to succeed.

I sigh, I think.

Sometimes, I desperately wish I could turn my brain off. I'd be so much happier.

"Let's sit outside," Mom says, the warmth of her hand chasing away the cold of the fork in my grip. It clatters against the porcelain, which I hand Rosario with a grateful smile before trudging outside through the back door at the far end of the kitchen. As we round the corner, my mom asks again, this time implying more than just the simple words. "How are you, Zoe?"

How am I?

A fully functional mess.

Outside, unshaken—perfect gleaming ice and bulletproof glass. The only vestige of my dance with death is a mar on skin. In the end, it only deepens the edge of my unapproachability . Not my words.

Inside, I'm… learning. I'm blood and bruises, sharp shards that tear and shred tissue to the bone. I'm learning to patch them up as I go, to fit the little broken pieces back together and apply the glue. Learning to walk again, except I'm barefoot and blindfolded, and I never know when my toes will fall out of the line and tumble into an abyss of dark memories and haunting whispers.

The simple thought of going back to my apartment, even if that means three steps across the hall, still makes my skin sticky with dread. I miss the comfort of familiarity and habit, but there isn't much inside my four walls that I'm homesick for.

Desperate to return to my real life, I'm afraid, too—normalcy brings a false sense of safety, and I fear I might fall for it only to be hit in the face with reality. There's no space for more scars.

"I'm fine." I sigh.

Mom sighs too. "I'm sorry, Zoe."

"I'm not mad at you, Mom," I say.

The sun crawls low on the horizon, making the tall trees taller on the grass grounds. Perfectly aligned along the contours of the space, they rise high towards the sky in a shield, a limit of the perimeter .

Upon a flight of seven long, narrow marble steps, the green lawn awaits, impeccably trimmed and tailored. Light flagstone squares make a pathway that snakes all the way across the rectangular perimeter, erupting into a round marble fountain.

With my feet, I count one, two, three, twenty-two steps until I lose count, the numbers fading when my mom's voice comes again.

"I wish you were. Then you'd blame me. As it is, I think you blame yourself. I think you think he left because of you—your father. Don't you?"

Ah. This is about my father.

For a moment, in the hospital, I thought I saw his favorite forest-green vest in the shadows through the window, quickly discarding it as concussion symptoms. I don't even know if it's still his favorite color anymore.

In the end, he never came. Or called.

I lower myself beside her on the marble bench near the fountain, the middle unoccupied between us.

"That's just not right, Zoe. You are the only one who has no responsibility in any of this."

"What I think, Mother," I say, restarting the mental count. "Is that neither of us should carry responsibility or guilt over decisions we didn't make."

The shadows of the trees sway to silent songs of the gentle wind, darkening one limestone square, then the next, with the weight of their shade.

"I was never raised to be a mother or a wife, even if that was expected of me, too. I was raised to be the legacy, to be excellence—so that's who I was," she confesses in her voice. It doesn't shake the slightest as her eyes gloss over. A testament to her own words, she remains the woman she was raised to be.

"I didn't know how to be a mom. So, I convinced myself you were better off without my mothering. If I couldn't be good—the best—I could only mess you up. Women are raised to exceed and excel in a world that is tailored for our failure, eager for our downfall. A world that thrives on our self-hate. I immersed myself in the only thing I knew how to be good at. Look at what good that did."

"Are you saying I'm a mess, mom?"

A blink, and the woman I recognize is back.

"What I'm saying, Zoe, is I failed you. You must understand my failure is not in any way a reflection of you."

My phone chimes in my pocket. Instantly, I know it's Miles. We do that now—texting. Well, I now return his voice messages with my own—he doesn't trust regular texts. In light of the recent events, it's understandable, so I make an effort for his sake.

Ahead, a little bird lands on the sun-heated stone with a thirsty chirp. Its beak moves with bated breath, begging for our departure to sate its thirst.

"You've always been so strong and independent. You shouldn't have to. You're my baby. You deserved a mother's protection. Not just my distant, silent love."

In my periphery, I see her ankles uncross, knees bumping against the bench as she folds her body to fully face me.

I don't move an inch.

"I loved your father—still do. But I didn't know how to be what he needed. So, I let him go, thinking that was the best I could do for him. It was a relief, honestly—to be able to do something, even if it was simply not opposing his departure. "

The pitter-patter of water, from one tier to the other in the fountain, becomes a sweet lull that keeps a semblance of peace as we navigate murky seas without a map.

"But I failed to notice how that hurt you. And I failed again when my absence allowed your grandfather to do to you what he did to me—too busy being what he made me."

My grandfather…

As a little girl, he stole me from myself—chipping away at who I was to make room for his ideal granddaughter; teaching me to hate who I was so he could change and shape me into who I should be. The grandchild he thought he deserved.

But I wasn't the only one, was I? Or the first.

Of course not.

I look away from the tears collecting in the corners of her rich brown eyes, drops that defy gravity, refuse to succumb to the inevitability.

All this time, I've judged my mother for her father's sins. I still do.

We're the handiwork of her father.

"I'm fine, mom."

Finally, small wings stretch, blue with a ring of yellow. The little bird takes flight to the other side of the fountain.

Survival.

Mom's lips lift at the corners. It isn't a smile. It's a false imitation. "Aren't you always?"

I've spent my life believing it's freeing to keep my emotions to myself where I can feel them without the pressure of anyone else's eyes. But is it truly? When I'm locking them inside myself? Even now, there's an ocean in my throat that won't ascend to my eyes.

The fabric of her dress rustles as she drags herself closer. The brush of her finger, a tender caress on my scar, makes my eyes fall shut.

"Seeing you in that hospital bed was the worst moment of my life. But it has also brought me clarity. It has forced me to face all the things I've swept under the carpet."

Her voice is closer and lower, now that the distance has been erased.

Mine is but a strangled rasp. "Mom—"

"I haven't finished my point, darling." My shoulders curl with a wince under her strict tone. She tips my chin with perfect French tips, demanding I listen "I'm working on acknowledging my flaws and failures—and all the factors that weighed in. I'm trying to fix my mistakes and make peace with the fact there are many things I can never right. And I'm learning how to unlearn."

For a moment, the breeze fills the silence with gentleness against the trees, branches heavy with summer leaves and sunset sunshine.

"I can't change the past, unfortunately, but I can do better from now on. I can try to be a better mom. If you forgive me and let me."

For a long moment, we watch the little bird as it fills our silence, chirping happily now.

I mirror as she leans in, her embrace tight.

My smile is muffled against the linen of her white dress. "I really was the perfect daughter, huh?"

"You were. You are. You're perfect." A curly strand catches in her pearls as her embrace softens. She tucks it behind my ear. "The only time you gave me trouble was when you smoked marijuana and decided to cook eggs and fries at 2AM to the soundtrack of little baby sharks. Thank God it was just that once. I would've lost my mind if I heard that song just one more time."

Oh, that was definitely an enlightening experience. I snort before I can control my unbecoming reactions. Mom clutches her necklace, nails clicking against the pearls as she waits, impassive, as I regain my composure.

"Look at my favorite girls having a lovefest." A breathless voice puts an end to our stare-off. "Save some for an old man, too."

Grandpa's seasoned steps are slow, what should've been seconds stretching longer until he sits between us.

As we wait, I widen my eyes at my mother. "Oof." I run the back of my hand across my forehead. "Saved by my superhero."

"I'm glad you came, darling." Her grin mirrors mine.

"I'm glad you invited me, Mom."