“Zoe,” she whispers into the night.
“Zoe,” a word thrown to the breeze, wanting to catch somewhere, but her whisper is lost to a moonless night, and there is no one else to hear.
She closes her eyes and takes another step. So black mixes with light. Up becomes down. Chaos becomes calm. Being becomes not.
Just like Mama.
Just like Daddy.
Never far enough away….
Forty-Nine
Opal adjusts the For Rent sign in the window. It’s been over a week. She’s not worried. Someone will take the room. She’s read three pairs of eyes, and one leads the rest. She steps back and surveys the room. Zoe’s things are gone. The room is as it was before. Exactly as before, except for the stone bulldog. The bulldog had to go.
A car door slams.
“She’s here! She’s here!” Opal squeals. “I knew it! I could feel it in my bones! I read it in her eyes!” She leans out the window and sees a slight blonde girl standing near a car at the curb. “I knew she was coming! I knew!” She clasps her hands and makes a final sweep of the room.
“Is there anything you can’t read in someone’s eyes, Opal?”
Opal stops, her caftan lapping at her ankles like a gentle tide. Her head tilts in her comfortable birdlike way and she smiles. “Some things,” she says. “Like why you can’t take the room off the porch. A little cramped, sure, but the view is fine and the free rent’s even better.”
“You’ve already done enough, Opal. More than you know. And I’ve already stayed here long enough without paying rent. I owe you. I will always owe you.”
“No, Zoe Beth Buckman. No owing.” She cups Zoe’s face in her soft wrinkled hands. “I took as much as I gave. Truly. Now, you can read that in my eyes, can’t you?”
Zoe looks, reads, nods. “Yes,” she answers.
Opal sits on the bed and pats the bare tuftness next to her. Her hurrying is gone out of her. “Sit with me,” she says. Zoe does. She has the time. Except for the stuffed pillowcase in her hand, her bags are all packed in her car.
“I’ll miss the tennis matches,” Opal says. “So will the Count.”
“Me too,” Zoe says. But in an odd way, she is mostly relieved. It makes it simpler. Being kicked off the team makes her other decisions easier. It’s less to hold on to. Almost freeing. She thinks of Grandma, holding so tight, trying to keep together what has already come undone. So much like herself. She smiles. Like Mama. Like Daddy. And now it seems, like Grandma. Parts of them, all a part of her, too. A thought like that would have made her crazy a week ago, but now she can hold it like a harmless bug in her palm.
“You’ll be okay, Zoe. I feel it in my bones.”
“If your bones say so, it must be true.”
“That room is always here, though. Just so you know.”
Zoe nods. “And the knowing is enough.”
Opal reaches into her pocket and pulls out a large round apricot. “It’s a record! One for the books!” she says, and places it in Zoe’s hand. “Never had one last till the first week of October before. Hung on just for you. Odder than a June bug in July. What do you make of it? Think it’s a sign?”
Zoe turns the apricot in her hand, feeling the delicate velvet of the skin. “I suppose it’s fate, Opal. Fate, pure and simple. And maybe a sign, too. A season that’s late in coming is finally here.”
Opal nods agreement, and they share the silence, a connection like arms holding them together.
The doorbell buzzes, and Opal becomes a flurry once again, shushing the Count, who is bellowing in the hall below. “Quick!” she says as she jumps up and runs out the door, “Should I stick with Opal’s Lorelei Oasis? Or should I try something new?”
Zoe smiles. “Oasis worked just fine for me. But why don’t you wait and see? It might come to you the minute you look in her eyes.” Opal claps her hands together, delighted with the possibility, and nods her good-bye.
Zoe leaves down the outside stairs, her overloaded pillowcase bumping along each step. She takes in each thump, each creak, each scent, each sight, like she is memorizing time, like it is all new and she is overcome with what she might have missed. She glances over her shoulder, back at the garden. The tops of her rutabagas are spiky green tufts now. She won’t be here when they are ready to dig up, but Reid said he would come. Was it the drama? Like the final act of a play that made him offer to do it? Or had he forgiven her? He didn’t say as much, but she thinks that was it.
She unlocks her trunk and then stops to look down the shaded street, dappled light pocking the sidewalks and cars. Lorelei. A street she never knew existed three months ago. What will she discover three months from now? She almost missed the chance to find out. It’s been over a week since she was at the aqueduct, but she can still feel the chill of that night on her arms. She relives it every day. How close. How terribly close….
Voices pushing her but then saving her, too. Her own voice, finally, speaking louder than the others. Chopped-up conversations with Zoe as their beginning and end.