Zoe was silent a long time.
“I don’t know,” she said. “But I want to see him with my own eyes. I want him to know … I want him to know that I know what he’s done. I don’t want him thinking he got away with this—not for one more second.” She put a hand on X’s shoulder. “Will you take me?” she said. “Even if I don’t have all the answers yet?”
He turned back to her. Her eyes, even in distress, were so familiar. They never failed to unravel him.
“You know that I will,” he said.
Zoe texted her mother: I’m not going to be home tonight. I’m OK, I promise. Please trust me ONE more time.
She turned off her phone so she wouldn’t hear it explode. She nodded to X. She was ready.
He picked her up and pulled her to his chest. He did not bother leaping over the fence—he just let out a howl and kicked it down with his boot.
He carried her up and over the powdery banks and then down the icy road that wandered through the mountains. The moon had broken through the clouds. The snow gave off a faint blue light. Zoe was silent now—overwhelmed by the shock of it all, he imagined. Her eyes were open, but she appeared to see nothing.
He tried to think of a story to tell Zoe as he carried her. He thought that hearing his voice might console her somehow. Talking would never come naturally to him (how many words had he even spoken in his lifetime?), and he realized now that he didn’t know very many stories—and certainly no pleasant ones.
So he told her their story.
He began with her knocking him down on the ice.
He told her that she’d smelled like the dogs, adding nervously that he meant it as a compliment, that he’d liked it. He told her that he was changed the minute she smashed into him, that by stopping him from taking Stan, she’d woken him up—challenged him not to hate himself and to think of himself as something more than a killer. Because that’s all he was when they met, wasn’t it? It didn’t matter if you killed only bad men. You were still a killer. Even if Zoe and X had never spoken (never touched, never kissed) he wouldn’t have forgotten her. Couldn’t have. He’d have guarded the memory of her with two cupped hands, like it was a flame in a draft.
Was Zoe listening? He wasn’t sure. But he liked telling the story. It soothed him.
He told her about how they’d argued when her family found him in agony in the garage—how he’d begged her to abandon him, even though he was praying that she wouldn’t. He described riding to the house in Jonah’s sled and sleeping in a bed shaped like a fat insect. Why was it shaped like an insect? He’d worried it was a stupid question, so he had never asked.
X told her how he used to lie waiting for her to fall asleep. He told her that she snored just the tiniest bit—but maybe he shouldn’t have said that? He changed the subject. He talked about Jonah. He said he could feel his hard little hugs even now. He confessed that when he was tiptoeing out of the room one night he’d stepped on one of Jonah’s toy animals and broken its horns. How ashamed he’d been! He’d meant to apologize, but never did. He didn’t know what kind of animal it was. It had horns, so maybe it was a monkey?
Zoe’s lips twitched at this last detail—she nearly smiled.
She was listening. And she looked warm in his arms.
X talked for another hour. They were out of the mountains now. They were on a road lined with evergreens. X saw poles strung with wires. He felt civilization rising up to greet them. Still, it would take them ages to reach her father.
As if she’d read his thoughts, Zoe stirred in his arms and spoke.
“Why are you walking?” she said.
Her voice was flat and tuneless, but he was grateful to hear it.
“Why aren’t we zooming—or whatever you call it?” she added.
“I have seen the effect that zooming produces in you,” said X, “so zooming must be our last resort. In truth, I am happy to walk—for the more slowly we go, the longer I can hold you.”
Zoe was quiet a moment.
“Thank you,” she said softly. “But it’s okay to zoom.” After another silence, she added, “Do you really call it zooming? I was just guessing.”
“No, we don’t call it that,” said X. Fearing that he’d been unkind, he quickly added, “But we certainly can.”
Satisfied, Zoe withdrew into her thoughts again. The moon, appearing to follow her cue, ducked behind the clouds once more. Even to X, the darkness was alarming.
eighteen
The instant Zoe awoke, she knew her father was near.
She lay in a bare wooden hut on a beach in what she guessed was British Columbia, the ocean crashing and sighing on every side of her. She could feel her own version of the Trembling spreading beneath her skin. Her heart, her nerves, her lungs—everything in her body told her how close her father was.
X was not beside her. Zoe remembered only flashes from the night before: the hut had been locked, and X had smashed his fist through the door so they could get in. He’d warmed the place by simply rubbing his hands together, but still they’d slept huddled against each other, as if they were in danger of freezing. X had made a pillow for her out of his coat.
An hour ago—could it have been more? she wasn’t sure—X had opened the door, and a wedge of sunlight had fallen across her face. She’d woken, briefly. He told her he’d be back. He told her to keep sleeping. It was such a lovely thing to be told: “Keep sleeping.”