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“Oh.” She didn’t push. “Speaking of cosmic, I rather like the idea of reincarnation. I’d like to come back as a cat owned by someone like me.”
Zoë took a deep breath. Maybe it got easier the more you talked about it. She’d try hard, for her mother’s sake.
“The someone like you would probably be married to someone like Dad, who’s allergic.”
Her mother’s smile faded. “I can’t comprehend being nothing. It gives me a spooky feeling inside.”
That’s what Simon said, Zoë realized.
Anne Sutcliff winced, squeezing her eyes shut, and Zoë’s stomach did a flip. She wasn’t going to die now? Right in front of her? But her mother composed herself.
“I can’t go on with this pain.”
Again Zoë thought of Simon.
“I was afraid that seeing me like this would wipe out the good memories, Zoë. That you’d only remember me like this. Don’t let that happen. Remember when …” And she launched into one of her favorite stories of Zoë’s childhood.
Zoë sat and nodded and smiled, and didn’t really listen. She thought about what her mother had said. If she can deal with this, I’ll try. But I don’t have to like it.
Her father came back in and joined in with a story of his own. Then she was telling them her side of a story, and they were laughing, and she was a part of them again.
“Don’t let it take away your life too,” Zoë’s mother whispered to her just before Zoë and her father left. “Live it for all it’s worth while you’ve got it.”
No, her mother could never live by night, in the dark.
“I’m glad you came,” Dad said in the car.
There was still that thread between them. I just have to be patient, she realized. Let him grieve in his own way. Eventually he’ll come back to me.
She let herself be mesmerized by the frosty circles around the streetlights. She felt full of happy and sad at the same time. Dad still needs me, she thought. And what about Lorraine? Just because she’s out there doesn’t mean she doesn’t care anymore. It doesn’t put her out of my life for good. She’ll come back to me, too, in a way. No matter who she meets out there, we are still too much a part of each other’s lives. I hope she calls me soon.
Things changed, she realized. People grew, they moved, they died. Sometimes they withdrew into themselves, and sometimes they reached out after needing no one. She remembered Simon’s clinging embrace. What would it be like if nothing changed? she wondered. It would be stagnant, she supposed: frozen, decadent, terrifying. But why did it have to be so painful—all this change? Why did it mean losing people you love?
Then they were home.
There was a note on her bed, scribbled on a piece of paper torn from her notebook. Meet me in the park at 12. It was signed with a scrolling S.
She folded and refolded the note as she thought about him. He’d cheated death, yes, but was forced to live a life he hated. He was always shut out, never allowed to love, and was trapped in the horror of enslavement to his need for blood. She shuddered, thinking of the people he must have killed, and felt a little sick, knowing she had allowed him to kiss her.
But she felt different when he was there, when she could see the loneliness on his face. No matter what he’d done, he seemed innocent of it, like a wild animal. Now that he’d had his revenge, there was nothing left but the pain. He was too good to not be hurt by what he had to do to survive. He could never find happiness. A companion wouldn’t make it easier. Death would be better than living that way. Sometimes there was a time for death.
She thought about her mother then. Perhaps there was always a good reason even if you couldn’t see it, and it was a crime against nature to deny change.
Maybe it would be the kindest thing to kill him, she thought. No one else knew about him. Maybe it was her responsibility, for his sake, and the sake of others too.
She felt terrified at the very thought. But if she was prepared to help kill Christopher, if she had been capable once, couldn’t she be again?
In the garden shed she found a tumble of wood in the corner. Three thick shafts had been sharpened for some use in the yard. Their ends were darkened with soil. She held one and turned it in her hands. It would do. Her lip trembled, and her stomach twisted. Would she come from the front and see the look of betrayal on his face, or did she strike like a coward from behind? Did she even have the physical strength to force it through?
She flung the stake from her with a sharp cry, and its clatter echoed in the earthy hut. Simon wasn’t like Christopher. She couldn’t do it.
Zoë went to meet Simon after her father had fallen asleep on the couch. What am I to do? she thought. She passed a coarse, broken wall near a bus stop. Some semiliterate street poet had sprayed a message there: Life is an ilusion that last too little.
He was on her bench. He sat with his head bowed, and his eyes closed, like a choirboy in church. His translucent beauty once more surprised her. She could never quite remember it exactly, so it always came as a breathless shock. Beside him on the bench was his painting, on the other side a battered brown suitcase.
His head came up, and his eyes snapped open to meet hers. “Good evening,” he said quietly. “Come sit with me.” He put his suitcase on the ground. She went to him, and he took her hand and kissed it. “Remember your poem, Zoë? I’m going to shift into a sunbeam this time.”
She was puzzled and suddenly afraid for him.
