Zoe said nothing.
“He was really unhappy toward the end,” her mother continued. “He felt like a failure. He hated who he was. And he thought I’d stopped loving him, which … It kills me that he thought that.” She paused. “I’m only telling you all this because you’ve asked me so many times, and I think you can handle it.”
“I can,” said Zoe. “Don’t stop.”
“Look, I don’t know anything about caving, but it seems like he was too smart to die in some freak accident,” her mother said. “So I thought maybe he killed himself, and I didn’t …” She paused again, and pressed her hands against her eyes. “I didn’t want the cops to go in there and prove I was right.”
Zoe leaned forward. She hugged her mother for real this time.
“I know Dad wouldn’t have done that,” she said. “He just messed up. He stopped to take a picture—and he fell. When I was in the cave today, I could picture exactly what happened. I could feel it.”
Her mother nodded.
“I’m sure you’re right,” she said. “I want you to be right.”
“I am right,” said Zoe. “So you’ll tell the police to go get him now? I kicked ass today, but it was scary as shit—and Silver Teardrop is nothing compared to Dad’s cave. I don’t actually want to die doing this.”
Before her mother could respond, an elderly, German-sounding couple came through the door. Zoe’s mom took their money, and handed them flip-flops, towels, and locker-room keys. She and Zoe watched them shuffle down the stairs, arm in arm, and didn’t speak until they’d descended out of sight.
“I’ll talk to the police,” she told Zoe. “I promise I will. And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you all this sooner.” She paused. “Being a grown-up is the worst,” she said. “You’ll be better at it than me. I can already tell.”
Her mother’s shift was supposed to end at six o’clock, but at 5:58 an employee she referred to as the Flaker called to say that he had weird spots on his tongue and was it cool if he bailed? Her mom was exhausted—she didn’t even have the energy to brush her hair back when it fell in her eyes—and her shoulders sagged at the news. Zoe was still on a high from crushing Silver Teardrop. She offered to cover the shift herself. Her mother did the whole I-couldn’t-ask-you-to-do-that thing, but Zoe said, “Shut up, I’m doing it. Shut up, I’m doing it”—and so on until her mother gave in.
Zoe’s mom told her the pools were basically empty: there was the German couple, who were now making out in the big pool, and a single dad throwing a birthday party for his beastly six-year-old daughter in the smaller one. She reminded her that there was a lifeguard on duty at each pool, and that if she couldn’t find Lance, the security guard, he was probably in the locker room doing Pilates. Her mom told her that she could close up early if the place emptied out—and, on a sort of creepy note, that she should watch the security monitors because they’d been having some sneak-ins.
“There’s one other thing,” she said. She opened her laptop, which lay on the desk in front of Zoe. “I was going to let this wait until morning because I wasn’t sure you could handle it after the cave and everything. But you’re going to want to see it.”
Zoe’s mother called up a news story. She swiveled the computer toward Zoe, and took a step back.
“It looks like X found Stan,” she said.
Zoe’s eyes raced over the article:
A man murdered in a hair salon in Wheelwright, Texas, earlier this week has been identified as Stan Manggold … Mr. Manggold, 47, was a native of Virginia … He was wanted by police … The coroner’s report indicates that Mr. Manggold died of blunt-force trauma to the neck when his body was thrown headfirst into a mirror above one of the stylist’s stations … Hairdressers described the assailant as an agitated, black-haired Caucasian between the ages of 18 and 21. He was said to be wearing dark boots, black pants, and a purple cowboy shirt. Police have released an artist’s sketch, but have no leads at this time.
Purple cowboy shirt? thought Zoe.
She clicked on the link to the sketch.
The mouth was all wrong. The eyes didn’t have enough depth. Still, there was something about the drawing—the long, wavy hair, the bruises on the cheekbones—that evoked X so powerfully that Zoe felt the blood rise in her cheeks.
She shut the computer and pushed it away.
“It’s over now,” her mother whispered. “The craziness is over. X, the cave—everything. We’re going to be okay.”
But Zoe didn’t want the craziness to be over. She wanted X back. She couldn’t help but hope that now that the lords had Stan in their clutches, they might let X out to hunt more souls.
Zoe’s mom told Zoe she’d pick her up later, and left her sitting behind the desk idly eating yogurt pretzels and watching the bank of snowy, out-of-date security monitors. The single dad ushered the flock of six-year-olds into the night. The old German couple eventually wandered out, too, the wife’s hand on the husband’s butt. Nothing else happened for hours.
Zoe sent Val ten texts to pass the time. Three of them were about caving, five were about X, and two were about yogurt pretzels. Val must have been with Gloria—on the weekends, they often got in bed with a ton of food, hacked into Val’s brother’s Tinder account, and swiped right on all the girls they thought were hot—because she wrote Can’t talk and (when Zoe wouldn’t leave her alone), New phone who dis.