She shook her head in disbelief.
“I’m keeping you,” she said.
seventeen
X followed Zoe over a snowy rise. The drifts were deep, and their progress was slow. He could hear her just ahead of him, panting and swearing. Occasionally, she would turn back and say, “We’re almost there” or “Okay, I was lying, now we’re almost there.”
He himself did not speak. He couldn’t shake the image of Zoe’s father from his brain. He kept picturing the man’s hand extended toward him, reddened and chapped from the cold and waiting to be shaken. He kept picturing his eyes—Jonah’s eyes.
There was nothing but snow in every direction. He’d had enough of the snow.
Finally, they staggered down the other side of the rise. At the bottom, there was a fence and a hill of rocks, on which stood a small cross and a stone Buddha. X had seen souls arrive in the Lowlands with the same images around their necks—just as he’d seen necklaces with golden stars and crescent moons. New souls never fought so hard as when the guards tried to steal them away.
Without a word, Zoe began scaling the fence. It rattled as she climbed, and X felt a wave of concern. He wondered if he should stop her. But then he remembered that one of the things he loved most about her was that no one could ever stop her.
Zoe dropped down on the other side of the fence and landed with a deep, muffled thud. She turned to X.
“This is Black Teardrop,” she said. “This is my father’s cave. This is where he died.”
X’s heart lurched.
This was the moment to tell her that her father was still alive. This was the moment.
He couldn’t do it. The words wouldn’t come.
He wanted to give Zoe one more minute of happiness, of innocence—of not knowing.
Did he have to tell her the truth? What if he didn’t? He could take her father’s soul to the Lowlands and be free—and Zoe could keep believing that her dad had died in a cave. She didn’t have to know about her father’s sins. She didn’t have to know that he had run from his past as long as he could, or that when it finally caught up with him he’d chosen the most cowardly course: faking his own death and leaving her and Jonah and their mother to cry their hearts out by a tree in the backyard. Zoe could have a whole lifetime of not knowing.
She was staring at him. Her eyes were teary. He had to say something.
“Show me the cave,” he said.
He leaped over the fence and joined Zoe. There were already tracks, half buried in snow. They followed them up to the cave, then climbed to where the statue and the cross sat on the ledge.
“I feel bad for these guys standing out here in the cold,” said Zoe.
X did not reply. His mind and heart were aching.
“But I guess Jesus and Buddha can handle a little snow,” she said.
She sat down on the rocks, surrounded by the light that X had summoned up. She began talking, shyly at first.
She told him about the cave and about her father. X found it hard to concentrate on the exact words—they blew by him like a wind. She said that she’d gone caving the day before. She said that there was a moment during the descent where she suddenly knew what her dad had gone through when he died—not just the mechanics of it, but the terror, too. She said she’d felt the rope wind around his throat, as if it were her own throat. She’d seen the flame on his headlamp singe the rope, then burn through it as he struggled. She’d imagined the fall—the sudden, heart-in-your-mouth naked panic of it—as if the cave were devouring her instead.
She paused.
She apologized for talking so much.
She looked at him, desperate for him to speak. But still X said nothing. And every second that he said nothing felt like a lie. Could he lie to her for the rest of their lives? And would the two of them be able to build anything on top of the lie and still call it love?
Zoe pointed at the statues. She said her mom had left them there. She’d been shocked when she found them. She’d thought that her mother hated her father, but clearly she hadn’t been able to cut him out of her heart. None of them had. Jonah, she said, was a legit basket case.
She picked up the piece of bark from the ledge above the Buddha and the cross.
“See this?” she said. “‘I will come back.’ I carved that for my dad. I wanted him to know we’re not gonna just leave him here.”
X was startled by the words.
“What do you mean?” he said. “What do you mean you’re ‘not gonna just leave him here’?”
“We’re gonna come back and get him,” said Zoe.
He saw the seriousness in her eyes. No one could ever stop Zoe. This time, he thought it not with a pang of fondness, but of dread.
“I’m sorry I’m babbling, but I’m babbling because you aren’t talking,” she said. “Why aren’t you talking? You must have a million things to say.”
“I do,” said X miserably. “And yet no way to say them.”
Zoe climbed down from the rocks. She took off a glove. She laid her palm against the side of his face.
“Try,” she said. “Try just telling me one thing.”
X took her hand from his cheek. The softness of her hand—the kindness of the gesture—only hurt him.
“You cannot go into this cave,” he said.
“I’m not going to,” she said. “The police are.”
“They cannot go either,” he said, growing heated. “You must trust me. You must stop them. No one must enter this cave. Let them seal it forever.”