Chapter Thirty-Two

Zoe

F or the first time since I moved away for college, I use my key.

Under the yellow glow of outdoor lamps, I unlock the door. My hands tremble as I close it with a quiet click, and the chronic smell of sugar coats my nostrils.

Chocolate cake, carrot cake, coffee cake… There was always some assortment on the table—Rosario's way, whether she realized it or not, to fill the hole of absence carved by my parents.

Inside, the lights are mute, the walls silent, and I only stop when I've locked myself in the darkness of my childhood bedroom, with all the ghosts that used to hold my little hands.

With a click, rays of light pour from the lamp that hangs above the nightstand, dancing with the tiny specters of dust of a room no longer inhabited.

The shadows and silhouettes that once were my closest friends no longer feel close—familiar but distant, like the fleeting memory of a dream that evades me in the morning, long gone to some corner of the subconscious .

There is nowhere else to run, nowhere at all to hide from reality.

There were only two men whose presence never wavered from the moment they met me.

Life is stealing one from me. Lies, the other.

Behind fear and grief resides a sense deep of acceptance. Like this ending was always going to be the only ending—an end.

The thump thump thump behind my ribcage beats steadfast, a hollow ricochet against bruised bones. Breathe in, breathe out, oxygen mingles with gushing blood inside knotted veins. All limbs move according to command, all cells follow protocol.

My body doesn't care that my world is collapsing. It's harmony and mechanical precision and the eerie serenity that could only come with the continuous practice and preparation for these contingencies.

I lower myself to my nook under a tall window between shelves heavy with stories, where I used to spend my growing hours with friends that lived free in the pages of books.

Like some sort of sorcery, it still clings to the walls—the smell that traveled and penetrated the furthest doors of such a gigantic place without knocking, determined to hug me in the distance. It still comes to hug me.

There is a sourness in it now, though. Any comfort in it melts until it reeks of past, of nostalgia and melancholy—not home.

My home smells like deep seas, salty air and sunshine.

My home .

I ran away from it. I ran away. Fooled by a semblance of control fueled by abandonment issues, I ran .

Because if I left, I would no longer be worrying, waiting for the day he inevitably left, when and how beyond my control.

And I was terrified I would lose him—my home—so I left before he could leave. As though that hurts any less.

Silly, silly, silly girl.

Every time I think it'll get easier with time and practice, I uncover new layers of fears, new struggles.

Without their foundation, all my ceilings crumble, and the rain drenches me.

But the rain is a storm of sorrow and salt.

The tears belong to a little girl, and they arrive in rivulets that can't be stopped. The pain is as old as herself, and as raw as a fresh wound.

It's old grief stripped bare by new loss. It's all the hurt she never allowed herself to feel, and all the hurt she can't block herself from feeling right now.

I want to distance myself from her, tell myself I'm not that little girl anymore—but I am. We're one and the same.

So in the darkness, in the silence, in my loneliness, as much unwilling as I'm willing, I surrender to the tears, letting them batter against my sensitive cheeks until they drench my clothes—until Miles's hoodie soaks them.

I don't try to stop them anymore—I couldn't if I tried. I don't choke them down inside a dark pit. I don't chastise them.

I let them flow, and I let them fall.

I let them free .

Hours pass. I don't know how many, but the first rays of sunshine overshadow the lamp.

It's a new day.

I'm not a new girl.

The tears dried in parallel lines. I wipe them with cold water that cools the heat they'd left in their tracks.

In the mirror above the sink of my old bathroom, my image doesn't match my inside. I feel maimed and marred, but there is no blood. No bruises.

I still stand with all four limbs and ten fingers and a newfound clarity of what and who I want. And who I want to be.

And if I want it, I have to fight for it.

And I will.

I spent my adulthood running from my own life, burying myself in work and anything that allowed me to forget the pain—to pretend it didn't exist, and it didn't touch me.

The past is what it is—I can't change it, but I can't ignore it anymore. I can't close my eyes to the ghosts that I pushed down and trapped inside a bottomless black hole.

In the end, it sucks me dry from within.

In the light of the day, eye to eye, they don't look bigger than me. It's time I learn to stop fearing them. It's time I learned to let go of what I can't control and refocus on all the little things I can change.

And that begins and ends with myself, and all the ways I deal with life.

The plans in my head take form. Mental exercise never stops and I know my route before I'm out of my old room. Unwrinkled, the bed bids me a final farewell.

It's a new morning, and my footsteps are no longer stealthy in the light of the sun. At the bottom of the bifurcated stairs, my mother glances up in her pressed pantsuit to discover who they belong to.

"Oh. Zoe, darling, you're here." She rummages through her briefcase, pulling out papers and more papers. "I didn't hear you come in last night."

"You weren't home when I got here." My tone is harsher than I intend, an accusation. It lands like a slap in the face, and I've never snapped at her before.

Her head whips up to look at me—actually look at me, this time.

Wrinkled clothes, dark globes under red-rimmed eyes, and the kind of pain I couldn't conceal if I wanted to. That's what she finds.

Dropping her things with a clatter—or maybe they fall from her fingers—she dedicates all her attention to me. "Why are you here, Zoe?" she asks, gaze lingering worriedly on my scar.

The time is now, to start facing the hard things. I descend the last three steps.

"I love you, Mom." She takes a sharp inhale of air, just as I let out a sigh so long it feels like it's been trapped for years. "But you haven't always been a good mother to me."

"I know. I know, Zoe," she says, guilt written across her face in wrinkled calligraphy.

Suddenly, she looks older than her years. It takes me aback a little, seeing the time that passed in the lines of my mom's face and comprehending I wasn't there for so much of it. I did to her what she'd done to me. I mimicked her choices and doubled the distance between us. As much as we've bridged over the past months, there will always be a gap of time that we can never recover. It still feels like we stand either side of the Atlantic.

She makes her way to me. I'm almost sure she intends to hug me. I shake my head. I need the distance to keep myself together—and upright.

She stops in the middle of the entrance hall, wringing her hands. "I'm sorry."

I know she is, but her apologies don't do much for me, right now. I'm losing the men I love, and with realization and resolution came a fervent urgency to start my fight for them against my own helplessness and against all odds.

"You were right. My father left. One day, he was gone, and it was like the dad I knew was a product of my imagination. Life went on as always, as if nothing had happened—except it didn't. I never understood where my dad had gone. Or why. I still don't."

While I can rationalize my grandfather's narcissism, and its impact on me, my father's abandonment remains a question mark that won't dissolve.

Why?

One day, the sweet devoted father from my childhood vanished.

How?

How can I heal from something so far beyond my comprehension? How can I fight the damage if I can't see reason behind it? How can I find a cure without closure?

"The only logical conclusion is that it was me," I whisper, not that it's a secret or a confession. My voice simply fails me. "It must have been."

"No." Her denial is clear and concise through her thick throat. "No. "

The last thread of effort snaps soundlessly, and the tears take me silently again.

"It feels like it was." My voice shrinks to rasps and croaks, "Why?"

Maybe sometimes, there is no reason or logic behind human behavior. Maybe sometimes, there is no closure.

Some things just are, and that's okay, too—such a simple concept, so difficult to grasp.

I have to make peace with one as much as the other.

"Darling…"

There is an ocean of emotions on her face. I can barely see the brown of her irises behind the tears that don't fall. She sniffs. Then steals the breath right from my lungs.

"Your grandma was murdered in front of him."

Just like that, hot tears freeze in their tracks down my cheeks.

"It wasn't a random robbery. Your father was the target. I suppose some of his work's investigations angered the wrong people. One second she was stirring a pot. The next she was bleeding out on the kitchen floor."

Loss, loss, loss.

Grief encloses me in its arms. I relive age-old loss through a whole new perspective.

"He never gave me details, but… I have my ways," she says, unapologetic. "It changed him in ways I can't begin to imagine. I don't think he ever recovered, I'm not sure how that would be possible. I'm in no way speaking for him and I'll never excuse his actions. I can't tell you what happened inside him, or why he left. I don't understand how he could. But I'll also never understand what it is like to see someone you love die with a bullet meant for you. "

"I didn't know… I thought—I—" I stammer, scrambling for purchase. My castles have crumbled and I stand alone in the sand, an unending desert with no exit in sight.

"I—We never wanted you to know. We didn't want you to grow up feeling scared or unsafe. Both our jobs entailed enough danger, but we did our best to protect you."

Elite prep schools and private security; I saw them as luxuries and pretentiousness. As soon as I was old enough, I ditched it all. The truth was I never felt unsafe, but maybe I was only blissfully oblivious in my privilege.

"You need to understand, Zoe, that whatever switch flipped inside him, it was never about you. Even if tragedy hadn't struck, it still couldn't possibly have been you."

I nod, but I'm not sure I quite grasp the magnitude of her revelations. So I keep nodding and nodding and staring at the floor as my head races to absorb and understand all this new information. What it means, what it changes.

Does it change anything?

"I filed for divorce," my mother interrupts my efforts.

What I hear, though, is how much she still loves him.

I wonder how that can be—fifteen years apart, and her love prevails.

"Mom…" I search for her true feelings in her features. "I'm sorry."

"Don't. It was time." She smiles weakly.

It's a fa?ade. I see through it. Light plunges without mercy through the paneled windows, and we are made from the same cloth.

I hug her for a long time. Offering and drawing strength from each other. Because I'm not done. I haven't dared to deal the final blow .

"Grandpa is in the hospital. Probably should have led with that." I chuckle as tears assemble once more.

"What?" She draws back sharply, deep complexion ashen. "Darling, what happened?"

"He's… His heart… He's dying, Mom. He's—" My voice breaks, the words are glass tearing myself into shreds as they claw at my throat.

The oxygen won't find the path to my lungs, the day-old throb in my head hits new highs until I can't support my eyelids. They fall, and still tears find their way out through the corners.

"Oh, darling." She pulls me into the hug, again. "He'll be fine."

"It's bad, mom." I hiccup, dampening her pressed pantsuit.

"He'll be fine." Her hold tightens as she repeats the mantra, the prayer, the pleading.

She rocks me back and forth on our feet, like I'm a child. Like I wished she would have when I was a child. I welcome the comfort without resentment, saving some in a pocket beside my heart for later.

"I have to go, Mom." I let her go.

"Darling, are you in any shape to drive?" Her eyes bore into me with concerned assessment. "Maybe you should stay. Rest, eat."

"I need to go home, Mom. Miles… A lot happened and…" She softens, knowing. "What if he realizes I'm more work than I'm worth?"

Silence answers as she stares at me impassively, giving me all the time to hear myself.

I deflate, lowering to the stairs, rubbing my temples in circles. "I'm doing it again, aren't I? Even now. Always expecting people to leave me."

"It's okay to be scared, darling." Mom sits next to me. "It's normal—human. But don't let your fears dictate your actions."

She's right.

I can't control my fears. But I can make sure they don't control me. I can recognize the telltale signs of its claws sinking into my skin and uncurl them from my limbs. I can make sure they don't steal my happiness—or the possibility.

And I should get her therapist's contact.

"Who knew getting gunned down by a stalker would be the least of my damage," I half-joke, wiping my cheeks with a sleeve.

"Zoe Beatrice."

Uh-oh. The middle name means trouble.

"Too soon?"

She flattens her lips, unamused. "It will always be too soon for those jokes."

"Noted."

"And ignored?"

A genuine smile makes an appearance for the first time in 24 hours. "And ignored." I hoist myself up, dusting my hands on my pants. "I have to go."

Her soul-deep scrutiny is followed by an unconvinced nod. "Alright. But you'll eat something, at least." With surprising swiftness, she snatches my hand and pulls us to the kitchen. "Text me when you get there. And call me whenever you need anything, whatever it is."

"Okay."

Mom stops us in our path, putting herself right in front of me. "I mean it, Zoe. Promise me. "

It has never been easy for me to ask for help—or to accept it. But I mean it when I say, "I promise."