But the behemoth was in the room now. It prowled the perimeter, eyeing Zac, sniffing and tasting the air and catching the whiff and tang of his distress. Liking that scent, that flavor. Inching closer.
He had to get outside.
Simon stood and crossed to the window nearest Zac and shoved it open. Brisk night air flooded in, chilled Zac’s cheeks and nose. He drank it with mouth open. Rachel sat up and moved over on the daybed to watch him.
The behemoth didn’t leave, but it backed off.
“Yeah,” he said to Simon’s interrogating stare. “Better. Good.”
“What’s happening?” Rachel said.
The stripping of the masks had to be an act of God. Only He worked with such thoroughness. By the time Zac posted a public explanation of the degrading photo, not a soul would be left to believe in his flippant persona.
Anyway, Rachel was family.
He rubbed his arms against the chill. “I’m not big on close spaces.”
“I guess it is small.” She frowned at the walls.
“It’s okay. I just need a minute.”
He didn’t expect it to be that simple. He didn’t expect the behemoth to sneak close, press against him for a few seconds, and then slink out of the cottage. But tonight it was that simple. Didn’t mean the affliction was over; Zac had lived with it too long to be naive. But tonight he felt a gentle hand touch the old war wounds in his mind and soothe their scars. Maybe only for tonight. Nevertheless, it was grace he hadn’t earned.
He gazed out the window at a streetlight filtered through the silhouette of tree branches. Father. You’re still my Father. A tear slipped down his cheek. Well, okay, here I am. Use this mess of ego and panic and pain for whatever You will.
“Zac?” Rachel whispered.
He didn’t swipe the tear away. “It’s all right, Rachel.” A smile tugged his mouth, and he fixed his eyes past the tree on the shining light. “In fact, it’s kind of glorious.”
THIRTY-ONE
Three people, two cars,” Simon said.
“I have to drive.” Rachel stood with her arms folded, not crossed in defiance but an X over her chest, as if attempting to keep her heart inside.
“You’ll follow us to Harbor Vale?” Simon said.
“I’m agreeable to that.”
“Will you be agreeable for the whole drive?” He planted his hands on his hips.
Rachel shrank from him though he’d made no move toward her. “I’ll try. I am trying, really.”
“Okay,” Zac said, “we know you’re driving. We know Simon’s driving. I’ll ride with you instead of Simon.”
Her arms tightened over her chest. “I don’t have guests.”
“I promise not to leave your home a mess. Won’t even put my feet on the dash.”
“A passenger,” she said as if tasting the word. Slowly she nodded. “Only because it’s you, though.”
“Of course.” He grinned.
Simon rolled his eyes, but his mouth twitched. “So if you’re driving a passenger, you’ll follow me?”
“Well, otherwise I’d be abducting Zac.” Her arms lowered to her sides, and she studied Zac, searching his face for something. “You understand panic. What it does to a body.”
“Everyone’s afraid of something,” Zac said.
“But not to the same degree. You looked like how I feel.”
“Okay.”
“I’m telling you because I might need help when we get closer to Harbor Vale. Closer to the people. They’re my close spaces.”
Oh … man. “I’ll help you however I can.”
“I’ll do my best to fight it down. I usually can when it’s weekly things—you know, grocery shopping, pumping gas, stopping at the bakery. But I don’t know what’ll happen with Finn and Cady.”
“We’ll get through it together. Okay?”
She clenched her eyes shut and stood there for a long moment. Then she opened her eyes, nodded, and motioned to Zac. “Let’s go.”
To make room for Zac in the passenger seat, Rachel had to move a stack of mass-market paperbacks and CDs, a lavender zip hoodie, and a cardboard display box filled with protein bars. Each item, even the hoodie, was re-homed somewhere deliberate on the back seat, which also held two piles of folded laundry, more non-prep food, and her camera case. On the floor of the SUV behind the front seats were two pairs of casual shoes and two duffel bags, one stacked atop the other.
“When was the last time you got a hotel room?” Zac said as he watched her rearrange.
“Before Leahy? Oh, goodness, I have no idea.”
“So in Harbor Vale, you were living …?” He gestured to the vehicle.
“Yep. It’s so comfortable, having one’s very own space. Hotels are itchy in comparison.”
“I see.”
“I know it’s not normal.” She stood up and shut the door then walked around to the driver’s side. “But I enjoy moving, Zac. I never wish for an apartment or a house.”
“Fair enough.”
He eased into the passenger seat and shut his door, leaned back and gazed out the side window. Simon had brought his rental sedan to the entry of the cottage row. He pulled onto the street first, and Rachel pulled out after him.
Zac waited a few minutes for her to relax into the routine of driving. When he wasn’t discussing an emotional topic, Simon was a laid-back, defensive driver; but Zac expected Rachel’s presence on the road would be downright grandmotherly.
How wrong he was.
In minutes she was practically tailgating Simon. Not close enough to hit him in an emergency stop, but close enough to let him know he was driving only a mile over the speed limit, and she had places to be.
“He’s cussing at you right now.” Zac held in a chuckle.
“What, my following distance?” Rachel scowled. “He drives like a woman.”
“Please tell him that.”
“I just might.”
Of all the wonders of the modern world, Simon increased his speed by exactly four mph. Rachel widened the distance between them and sighed her satisfaction.
“He learns fast.”
“Tell him that too.”
A smile curved her mouth, slow and tentative. Then it faded, and she drove in silence. Zac let her. After a few minutes, he closed his eyes.
“Usually I sing in the car,” Rachel said as he was drifting into a weary doze.
Sacred information. A glimpse into her home, her life. Zac opened his eyes and sat up. “You can now, if you want.”
“Oh no, I couldn’t.”
“Okay.”
A return of the quiet. Was she trying to tell him something? He watched her drive for a minute, the calm focus on her face, the easy sureness of her hands on the wheel.
“Want to talk?” he said.
She swallowed hard. “Yes, please.”
“Any topic in particular?”
“I want to hear about your life. Your history.”
“Sure.”
“I guess you’ll want to know mine too. You and Simon and the other one—is it your bookseller, the one who wants to be cured?”
“That’s the one.”
“What’s his name?”
“David Galloway.”
“Oh, that’s a lovely name. Don’t you agree?”
“I’ve never thought of a name as lovely before, but sure, if you say so.”
“Galloway,” she said, the softness in her voice lending the syllables a kind of poetry. “Scottish, meaning ‘way of the stranger.’”
“You’re a fount of knowledge.” And Zac had underestimated David’s bookishness, which he hadn’t thought possible. He grinned, and Rachel turned to study him.
“How old are you?” she said.
“Physically or literally?”
“Both, of course.”
“I stopped aging at thirty-two. This year I’ll be turning a hundred and sixty.”
“Oh my.”
“What about you?”
“I’m twenty-four forever, turning one hundred sixteen this coming March.” One hand left the steering wheel to cover her mouth.
“What’s wrong?”
Slowly her hand returned to the wheel. She turned her eyes to him, and they were fever-bright. “You’re the first person ever to know my real age.”
He couldn’t respond to that without some form of condolence. “David’s going to be a hundred and sixty-eight.”
She turned her attention back to the road, shaking her head. “A long time for someone who wants the cure. How has he endured it?”
“You should ask him.”
“I hope I get the chance.”
“No reason you shouldn’t.”
“Well, there are reasons, of course. But while this lasts, I could tell you my story, and you could tell me yours.”
Her eagerness filled the air to bursting, hungry and pure. He wondered what she had been like in her twenties, in her thirties and forties. Before decades of isolation.
“Sounds good to me,” he said.
“Oh, I wish the drive were longer.”
“Hey.” He held out an open hand to her, wanting to squeeze her shoulder, but that wouldn’t be wise when she was driving. She might startle and steer them over the median. “I am not going anywhere.”
“I want to talk and listen. But it feels dangerous. Not—not like you might be dangerous. I know you’re not. It doesn’t matter, though.”
Like his knowledge that rooms without windows were no less safe than the outdoors, not inherently anyway. “Want me to start? You can ask me questions.”
A long pause then a shake of her head. “You ask me. Anything you want to know.”
Later he would take a walk outside. Breathe and let go of all this brokenness. For now … he’d start with something small. “What color is your hair?”
“Red.”
“Cool.”
“Not really. It’s the bright orange that fades with age, except mine doesn’t of course, so people comment on it constantly. Mostly compliments, but I couldn’t stand it. I get fewer remarks on the gray, and it reflects my soul more accurately.”
If she had this many words to say over the color of her hair …
Under normal circumstances, he’d be all ears for hours. Nothing was more fascinating than a human being’s life story. But tonight his body throbbed and his head was foggy with exhaustion. Well, he’d do his best, listen as well as he could. And then, after he’d gotten some sleep, he’d keep listening to her for as many days or weeks or years as Rachel needed him to.
“Zac?”
“Just thinking.”
“Oh, I’ll be quiet then.”
“No, go on.”
“About what?” As if the color of her hair were the measure of her.
“You choose now. Something you want me to know.”
She was quiet a long time, driving with checked aggression behind Simon. Her mouth pursed then relaxed. She glanced at Zac then quickly away when their eyes met.
“Were you dying?”
He didn’t need her to clarify. “Yeah.”
She nodded. “I’m pretty sure all of you were.”
“We were,” Zac said.
Strange that he was the only one of them who could tell her that, the only one who knew every longevite story. Eventually, if the family stayed together, they would hear each other’s lives told; but it hadn’t happened yet.
“I wasn’t.” She tapped her thumb on the wheel. “Doc didn’t give me the cure to save me. Didn’t give me the cure at all. He was dead by then. TB, did you know that?”
“He told us he had it, before he left.”
“I inherited his experiments and his notes and his IQ. I didn’t inherit his way with people, but I wasn’t like this either. Just for the record. I had a fiancé and a future. I was a normal twentysomething woman of the twenties. Do you believe me?”
“Any reason I shouldn’t?”
“You’ve only seen the anthropophobic version.”
Her shoulders heaved in a silent fortifying breath. Her thumb tapped the wheel again. She needed more from him than blind acceptance.
“Used to be, I had no trouble with tight spaces.”
Rachel met his eyes and, this time, held his gaze a long moment.
“You believe me, don’t you?”
“Of course,” she said.
“We’ve been hurt. All humans have; we’ve just lived long enough to collect a lot of hurt. I’ll never judge anyone’s fear, Rachel. But especially not the fears of my family.”
“You shouldn’t call me that.”
“If you don’t want me to, then I won’t.”
“It’s not about what I want.” She was quiet as she followed Simon in passing a row of three slow cars and a slower van. As they accelerated and merged back into the right lane, she said, “I probably won’t be acceptable.”
He had no response. He could promise acceptance from no one but him.
“I fell from a horse,” Rachel said. “Not a bad fall, as those can go, but I landed on my arm. Compound fracture of the radius.”
“Ouch,” he said when her pause lengthened.
“Hmm? Oh. Yes. I’d never experienced that level of pain before, and I was quite the coward about it.”
Starkness filled him. Rachel hadn’t needed the serum. Could have lived a normal life.
“I was irate when it didn’t work. I had to recover on my own. I thought Doc must have made a useless batch of the stuff and never realized it. I nearly poured out the last doses.”
“When did you realize what had happened?”
“Not for decades. Complete denial on my part. I enjoyed my youthfulness, but I waited for my age to catch up with me.”
“You had no one to compare notes with.”
“It sank in over time,” Rachel said. “I thought this was my comeuppance for using the serum when I didn’t truly need it. I could have saved a life with it, and instead I was selfish. So now here I was, stuck with this young face and this bright hair. I never guessed the agelessness happened to everyone. I thought if the serum prevented death, then its power was spent and you all went on to live normally.”
“How did you find out differently?”
“I just started to wonder if I’d jumped to the wrong conclusion. I needed to be sure. I had your faces and your old names, but that was all, and it did me no good until recognition software became commonplace. I found Holly online and began to track her social media posts. She was constantly checking in at locations in Southern California, so I knew she lived there. I recognized Sean too, when she posted pictures of him. And then one day this past June …”
Minutes passed while Rachel drove, alternately biting her lip and clenching her hands on the wheel. At last her voice came again, the quietest yet.
“I saw them. Cady, Holly, and Anna. All faces I knew from Doc’s notes. A picture of them in Missouri together, at a county fair. They were eating a giant cinnamon roll. They were laughing.”
Her breathing grew rough.
“Hey,” Zac said. “It’s okay.”
“I saw the picture and thought, I won’t be selfish again. I won’t take this cure and not give it to the others first, and now I can find them, find them all.”
“Rachel.”
“And I did find them. And I did give it to them. And I killed them.” The vehicle weaved.
“Hey, hey. You’re driving, Rachel. Keep calm.”
“It will never be okay.”
He reached across the console and put his hand on the wheel to steady it. “Rachel, you’re going to hurt someone mortal if you don’t keep calm. You hear me?”
“Yes,” she said after a moment, and her grip eased. “Yes.”
“Tell me something else about you, something unrelated.”
For a minute she said nothing, which was fine if she needed the quiet, but he guessed she was choosing what to reveal.
“I’ve been hiding for a long time,” she finally s
aid. “It started with Robert.”
“Who’s that?”
“He was going to marry me until he found out what I am. Then he was going to kill me.”
THIRTY-TWO
She said her fiancé had wanted to kill her, and then she said nothing for at least ten minutes. But unlike Simon, Zac was a patient guy. He watched the nighttime landscape pass out the window, facing the peninsula’s interior this time, wide stretches of fields and trees in variations of black beyond the highway’s streetlights. Cady and Finn might be driving too, if David had failed to convince them otherwise.
Around the time Zac decided Rachel wasn’t going to disclose further details, she began tapping her thumb on the steering wheel.
“Yeah,” she said as if he’d asked a question. “Robert who loved me, until he knew me.”
Quiet seemed the best response for now.
“We were together only a year, and then … well, it’s stupid, but I used to keep a diary. He found it and didn’t tell me, just put it back.”
Curiosity conquered. “What year was this?”
“1949. I was almost fifty, but I looked like this, so I knew by then. My diary was brimming with angst.”
“You said the twenties before. A fiancé and a future.”
“Oh, Charles. Yes. He died before we could be married. Robert was my second chance. Then one night in bed he suffocated me with a pillow. When I revived, he was terrified. Wanted to know what I was. Started talking to me like I was someone else, someone he didn’t know.”
Suffocated by her fiancé. But these words didn’t seem to ache in her. Not like her isolation, not like her guilt. These words didn’t squeeze the vehicle from the inside out. Zac breathed them in, and they were weightless.
“I took what I could that was mine, and I left before he could try something else. I saw then how it would be for the rest of my life. No one could find out.”
At that, the strain surfaced in her voice. “Rachel, I’m sorry.”
“I burned the diary, of course. The funniest part is, I was going to tell him. I mean, that week, that month—I don’t know when, but I was polishing the words. I was ready.”
From Sky to Sky Page 24
