Jane Doe(47)

I shake my head. I’ve never been to Meg’s grave.

“They were daisies. I thought . . . something cheerful, you know?”

“I think daisies sound perfect.”

I’m surprised that he actually sent flowers. He’d said he would, but people say things like that all the time. In my experience, they rarely actually do them. I turn and study his face until he glances over. “What?” he asks with a faint smile.

“Nothing.”

Nothing, because I’m not sure what to do with him.

It’s fully dark by the time we get to the zoo. From the parking lot, I can see lights winking through the bare tree branches.

I wonder if Meg ever did this. It seems like something she would’ve liked.

My drink is cold now, but I finish it as we walk to the entrance. Luke pays for both of us and we follow the stream of people in, all of us bundled up in thick coats against the night chill. The cider tastes like fall on my tongue. I feel like I belong tonight.

Walking into the park, I expect Christmas decorations. Instead the lights are sculpted into the shapes of animals. I gaze up at a blue-and-orange monkey with a swinging tail.

“Where to first?” Luke asks, indicating a sign with arrows pointing in three different directions.

“Big cats,” I answer immediately.

We head off in that direction, passing an exhibit with a sign that says BLACK BEAR. There’s no bear in sight, or else he’s hiding in a corner the overhead lights don’t reach. I’m surprised to see that the space looks like a little mountain canyon with rocks and a stream.

“It’s not what I expected,” I say as we come to a similar-looking exhibit marked BROWN BEAR.

“The lights?”

“No, the zoo. I thought they were all in little cages. With bars, you know?”

Luke turns to look at me. “Haven’t you ever been to a zoo?”

“No. This is my first time.”

“Jane, that’s crazy!”

I shrug. “Not a lot of zoos where I grew up.”

“Then this is a special occasion. We’re going to need to do everything. The carousel. Wax animal machine. Funnel cake.”

“Hey, I’ve had funnel cake before!”

“But not zoo funnel cake.”

“True.”

“Come on. You have to read all the signs.” He pulls me over to the brown bear description, but I still haven’t seen any sign of life. I humor Luke and read the facts about each animal. Bears, foxes, wolves. The wolf is the first animal I spot. It’s staring at me past the edges of a scraggly bush. I stare back until a paler wolf joins the first and they trot away together.

“That’s pretty cool,” I say.

“The big cats are just ahead.”

I immediately abandon the wolves and hurry toward an archway decorated with tigers and lions. More faux landscapes await, but these exhibits are behind thick glass that rises up until it meets stiff netting that keeps the cats from finding a way out into the night.

The Bengal tiger is awake and prowling. I freeze in wonder at the sight. He moves exactly like my cat. Muscles slide under fur as his eyes scan his surroundings. Sleek, elegant, powerful—he’s gorgeous and deadly.

His pupils turn briefly silver when they catch the light.

I’m shocked by the huge size of his paws and his massive head. He is a killer. Far more dangerous than I’ll ever be.

I watch him slide between two tree trunks, and then he leaps up to a rock ledge with no effort at all. My God.

His keepers love him, I’m sure. They care for him each day, feeding him and tending any ills. They speak to him and throw him treats. Still, I can see in his piercing gaze that he would happily kill any one of them, given the chance. No, not any one of them. All of them.

That kind of thing isn’t valued in a human, but we see the awesome beauty of it here, behind a cage, where it can’t hurt us.

I will never be as dangerous as this animal, but I can move freely among people and they’ll raise no alarm.

The tiger settles down and closes his eyes. We move on to a leopard, then a puma, then another tiger, slightly smaller than the first. All of them are gorgeous and fascinating.

I watch until I feel Luke getting restless beside me. He buys me cotton candy and leads me to the carousel. I’m dizzy with delight by the time we leave.

Luke fills up a little of the empty space inside me, and I see the world through his eyes, just as I did with Meg.





CHAPTER 32

Turns out that Steven was busy while I was out on my date. The little bastard is cheating on me.

Well, to be clear, he’s trying to cheat on me, but the woman on the other end of the phone isn’t interested in being his booty call. I click through to the earliest video from this evening to see who else he called.

He gets home from work and heads straight for his exercise room. He reappears forty-five minutes later to put a pot of water on the stove and then he disappears for what I assume is a quick shower, because he’s wearing a different T-shirt and sweatpants when he emerges to dump a box of macaroni into the steaming pot. No booty calls so far. My man is still faithful.

He turns on a football game and sits at the kitchen table to eat his meal, but before he’s done, he looks up, startled at something. He mutes the TV. I hear it then. The doorbell ringing.