“What if you never return?” said Zoe. “What if you stay in our world?”
Hadn’t he told her already? Didn’t she understand how he endangered them every moment he lingered in the Overworld? Why was she so reluctant to believe him?
“I suspect,” he said, “that they would obliterate everything—and everyone—you ever loved.”
Building the Lowlands, even out of snow and toys, put X into such a grave mood that once it was finished he could hardly stand to look at it. Jonah continued to play. X was touched to see that he freed the prisoners from their cells and locked the lords and guards in instead.
Zoe’s mother seemed as troubled as X. She took her daughter’s arm and steered her around to the front of the house, not knowing how keen X’s hearing was.
“He’s cute—I get it—but I want him out,” he heard the mother say.
The words, though wrapped in wind, were so clear that she might have been standing in front of him.
“I’ll give him another day to make sure he’s recovered,” she added. “That’s it.”
“You want to send him back there?” said Zoe. She sounded as if she’d been struck. “Now that you know he’s innocent? Now that you’ve seen what the Lowlands are like?”
“Yes, it has T. rexes, I know,” her mother said.
“You think he’s lying?” said Zoe. “You didn’t see what Jonah and I saw on the lake.”
“Honestly, I don’t know what I believe,” her mother said. “But last night—when I woke up at two in the morning in a sweat—it occurred to me that the best-case scenario is that he’s a delusional psychopath. I mean, that’s what I’m rooting for.”
In the distance, X could hear a car—a truck, from the sound of it—shifting gears as it plodded up the mountain. He’d been so comfortably ensconced in the Bissells’ home that he had forgotten there was anyone else in the world. The reminder was unsettling.
“I won’t let you send him back,” said Zoe. Her voice was rising now. “I won’t.”
“I’m not sending him anywhere—except away,” her mother said. “He warned us not to take him in. It was the first thing he said. Look, I know he helped you and Jonah—”
“He saved our lives,” said Zoe. “From Stan—somebody you should have warned us about.”
“Don’t do that,” said her mother. “I made your dad stop speaking to that man back in Virginia twenty years ago.”
“Why didn’t you ever tell me about him?” Zoe asked.
“Because it’s not a pretty story,” her mother said.
“Yeah, well, I want to hear it anyway,” said Zoe. “Right now.”
Her mother sighed.
The truck had grown louder. X watched it rattle into view. It turned out to be a van and—unlike Stan’s pickup, which had been as corroded and sinister as the man who drove it—the sides were painted to resemble the top of a snowy, majestic mountain. Strapped to the roof was a wooden carving of a bear. It appeared to be a permanent fixture for it was positioned to look as if it were the king of the aforementioned mountain. It was a happy bear, smiling and waving as it rode through the countryside.
X knew nothing about transportation, but to him the van seemed … silly. For a moment, it stalled. The tailpipe coughed up smoke, like someone experimenting with his first cigarette. But the driver got it started again and resumed the climb. X chastised himself for having let the van distract him. He turned his attention back to Zoe and her mother.
“Stan was disgusting even as a teenager,” Zoe’s mother was saying. “But he could convince your father to do anything. They broke into a teacher’s house. They stole a garbage truck. Seriously: a garbage truck! You know what they did with it? They actually went around collecting people’s garbage. Have you heard enough now? Can I please stop—please?”
“No,” said Zoe. “I want to hear everything.”
“You don’t,” said her mother.
There was a brief stalemate.
The van labored closer.
“When they hit eighteen or nineteen, the crimes started getting less and less cute,” her mother said. “It was like Stan was trying to figure out how weak your dad was and how far he could push him. There was stuff so ugly that your father cried over it. Eventually, he and Stan got arrested for something—I don’t even remember what, I’ve blocked it out—and I gave him an ultimatum: him or me. We got married a year later. I don’t think he changed his last name to mine because he was some big romantic—I think he did it because he had a criminal record. Now, should I have told you all that when you were a kid, Zoe? About your father? Who was a big enough disappointment anyway? Should I tell Jonah? How do you think that would go?”
Zoe said nothing. X suspected she was crying. When her mother spoke again, her voice was hushed and kind.
“I’m grateful to X,” she said, “and that’s why I didn’t turn him in to the police. But, sweetie, I think Jonah’s getting too close to him.” She paused, as the van drew nearer. “And I know that you are.”
X was still waiting for Zoe to deny it when the van turned up the Bissells’ driveway, about a hundred yards away. The engine sounded absurdly, almost catastrophically, loud.
“Crap, it’s Rufus,” said Zoe’s mother. “What’s he doing here?”