The Familiar Dark(34)

He’d been crying, the dim light catching silvery trails on his cheeks. “That thing you said today . . .”

I sighed. Louise had been right. Apparently my scene at the press conference was all anyone could talk about. “I shouldn’t have said it. Not out loud. I’m sorry I ruined the press conference.” I knew how to apologize even when I didn’t mean it, knew how to make the right words come out of my mouth in hopes they might diffuse whatever punishment was coming my way. With my mother, sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. But other people didn’t have her gift for sniffing out insincerity. It was like serving cake without the frosting. I’d left out the most important part, but people ate it anyway.

Zach pushed himself upright, less drunk than I’d originally thought, his movements still fluid and precise. “No,” he said. “I’m glad you said it. I’m glad you feel it. I’m sick of being sad all the time. Sick of pretending to be strong. I think anger might be a relief.”

I shoved past him, slammed my key into the lock on my apartment door. “It’s not a relief. None of this is a relief.”

When his hand fell on my shoulder, I froze, didn’t turn around. “What are you doing?” I whispered. “Go home.”

“I don’t want to go home,” Zach said, voice quiet. “My house doesn’t feel the same anymore.”

I pushed my door open, shrugged out from underneath his warm hand. I took a deep breath, made my face a blank before I turned to look at him. Close enough that I could smell the beer on his breath and the mint he’d chewed to cover it up, could see the golden starbursts in his brown eyes and the dark stubble forming along his jawline. “Stop it,” I said, voice stern, while inside my gut twisted and my heart jumped. “You’re acting crazy.”

Zach laughed, a hollow bark. “I feel crazy.” He took a step forward, into my open doorway so I couldn’t close him out. “I keep thinking about them. What they went through. How scared they must have been.” His voice broke and he swallowed hard. “How I should have been able to save them.” He held both hands out, toward me or God or the girls, I had no idea. “What kind of father can’t protect his own daughters?”

Something close to terror exploded inside of me, a clawing panic that left my voice weak and reedy when I spoke. “Junie wasn’t your daughter.”

Zach looked at me, eyes steady, not even a little bit drunk now. “We both know she was.”

I stumbled backward, body still upright but the rest of me spinning, sliding into the past even as my brain frantically tried to stay moored in the present. “She was mine,” I rasped. “Only mine.” I realized too late that by stepping back, I’d left Zach room to move inside the apartment, shutting the door behind him. Trapping me. I wasn’t scared of Zach himself, but whatever words he said next were going to rip into me like bullets, leave jagged, bloody wounds. And I was already weak, had barely anything left to offer up as a shield.

“It wasn’t immaculate conception, Eve,” he said. “I was there. She was mine, too.” He walked toward me but stopped when I backed away. “You don’t know how many times I picked up the phone those first few years, wanting to call. I used to sit right out there in your parking lot at night and debate whether I should knock on your door. But I never did, because you’d asked me not to.” He shook his head slightly. “You have no idea how fucking happy I was when Izzy came home from school all those years ago talking about her friend Junie. Asking if she could have her over to play. I couldn’t say yes fast enough. The first time Junie came around, I spent the whole day staring at her. I’d seen the two of you from a distance, but I never knew she had freckles or what her laugh sounded like. I was worried Jenny would figure it out from the way I watched her.”

“Does she know?” I managed. “Jenny?”

“No.” Zach shook his head. “Not a clue.” He looked toward Junie’s alcove, gestured with his hand. “Can I?”

I didn’t respond. Couldn’t. I wanted this to all be a bad dream, something I could shake away in the morning light. In my mind, Junie didn’t have a father, had simply emerged from me, part of my body and no one else’s. I watched, silent, as Zach stepped into Junie’s room. He sucked in a quick breath, threw me a pained smile over his shoulder. “Smells like her,” he said. A scream built in my head, pounding against my skull as he touched her quilt, ran his hand over her bedside table, picked up one of her textbooks and balanced it in his hand. “I was always good at science. And she was, too. We talked about it sometimes when she was at our house. Izzy never quite grasped it, but Junie did.” He set down the book. “Maybe she got that from me.”

I turned and walked into the kitchen, my breathing shallow and too fast, vision spinning. Banana cream pie climbing back into my throat. I didn’t turn around, even when Zach’s footsteps stopped behind me, his body close enough that I could feel his exhales stir the tiny hairs at the nape of my neck.

“You told them you hadn’t seen me since that night,” he said quietly.

“What?” I sounded like I was sprinting, lungs tight as I tried to outpace something determined to sink its claws into me.

“At the funeral home that first night. With Land. You said you hadn’t seen Junie’s father since the night she was conceived.” He ran one finger down the back of my neck, and my entire body pulsed. “You lied.”