Chapter 4
Cleaning Zoey took a lot longer than Peg had expected. She routinely checked her phone for the time as she helped Zoey with the shower and the time kept slipping away toward the moment where she couldn’t make any more excuses and would have to pick Brendan up. She’d figured that Zoey would be able to do most of the work herself, but once she had Zoey under the shower the girl just stood there with her eyes wide as the water pounded down on her head. She tried saying something at some point, but when the water had gotten into her mouth she’d squeaked and clammed up. It was as though she had not taken a bath or shower in the entire time she’d been gone and now couldn’t remember what they were for. Judging from the way the muck was caked onto her, Peg almost thought that might be the truth.
Eventually Peg had no other choice than to take off her own clothes and join Zoey in the shower to scrub her down. As soon as she was under the water too the intense awkwardness of the situation hit her. A memory, very fuzzy from age, came to her of their childhood. She remembered their mother bathing them together after some particularly rowdy play date in the park, although all the rowdiness would have to have been on Peg’s part since she only remembered Zoey as little more than a baby. Her mother had put them in the bath together to save time and Peg had thought that was just the greatest thing in the world, to have her sister with her where they could play with their bath toys together. She had a very vague memory of being perplexed to see her baby sister naked for the first time and discover that they actually looked alike under their clothes, and she’d asked her mother if everyone looked like that. Her mom had said more or less, and Peg had asked her if that included boys. Her mother had then been quick to change the subject.
That playful innocence about nakedness was all gone now, though, and Peg couldn’t help but feel distinctly uncomfortable with the idea that she was now standing naked with her sister. It wasn’t like there was anything sexual about it, and it wasn’t even the first time Peg had been this close to a naked woman, thanks to a night of drunken experimentation years ago. No, what made this feel so weird was the sense of vulnerability she felt in the situation. She still couldn’t even fully register the fact that her sister was here standing in front of her, yet with only about an hour of getting reacquainted, time that hadn’t even been very productive, Peg was forced to literally bare all. Zoey’s eyes remained unfocused the entire time, which Peg couldn’t help but feel was a blessing. Peg’s body was like a chronicle of all the time they had spent separated. Here were the stretch marks from when she had been pregnant. There were the tattoos that Peg had added after Zoey’s disappearance. She was most self-conscious of all about the various scars that criss-crossed her upper arms, shoulders, and legs. Those were the self-inflicted wounds that had slowly built up from all Peg’s cutting. Tony would sometimes run his fingers over them during intimate moments, but Peg was never quite comfortable with that. Those scars were hers, not to be shared with anyone else. Now Zoey would be able to see them as well.
The awkwardness gave way to frustration as Peg tried to scrub Zoey down. The scent of her Dove soap and Tony’s Irish Spring thankfully started to overpower the stench Zoey had come in with, but the crap that covered her was not easy in coming off. The more she worked the more she was certain that she was indeed putting her hands in shit, and soon the bottom of the tube was caked in an ugly gray-brown smear even with the water running over it. She ruined several loofahs and wash clothes, turning them into crusty messes that she was sure no one would ever want to use again. And still, despite all the scrubbing, some of it just would not come off Zoey’s skin. It was as though the shit had been permanently rubbed into her in some places, tattoos of the most disgusting order.
Finally Peg declared that this was all she could do for now and turned off the water. The tub would need to be cleaned now and she would still need to go around the house cleaning off anything Zoey might have touched, but she was at least in a semi-presentable state. Zoey looked down at herself, and although she didn’t say anything she looked for a moment like she was on the verge of a smile. Peg took that as a sign of approval.
“It’s a start at least,” Peg said. “I’m going to get you some clothes, and then I have to leave.”
The sound that escaped Zoey’s lips made it clear that she was not comfortable with that.
“I swear, it won’t take me more than fifteen minutes. I have to go pick up my son.”
Zoey blinked. “S…son? I don’t…” Zoey looked her up and down as though truly seeing her sister for the first time. “Peg? What did… I don’t understand.”
“I really don’t either at this point,” Peg said. “But we’ll figure it out, okay? I swear to you I won’t let you down again.” The again slipped out against Peg’s wishes. Years of therapy and group sessions were supposed to have drilled it into her head by now that what had happened was not her fault, but still she believed it on a deep, unreachable level.
Peg led her into the living room and left her there long enough to get some of her older clothes from her bedroom. Nothing fit Zoey, considering she had always been a smaller girl to start with and Peg had put on a few pounds here and there, but she looked decidedly more normal even with the baggy t-shirt and sweatpants hanging off her tiny frame. Zoey didn’t appear very comfortable in them, making Peg wonder just how long it had been since she’d worn something. It seemed ridiculous to think that she might have been naked for eleven years, but then it seemed ridiculous that she would be naked at all.
“I’ll be right back then,” Peg said. “Just stay here.”
“It’s out there,” Zoey said. “He’s looking for me.”
A shiver crept through Peg’s body. This was the first thing Zoey had said that might make some sense. “Who’s looking for you, Zoey? Is it the person who kidnapped you? Did someone kidnap you?”
“You have to watch, you have to see,” Zoey said. She didn’t even bother to look at Peg. Her gaze darted rapidly in every direction like she was trying to make some sense of her current environment. “He has no brain. Just eyes. He’s eyes on legs, and he’s out there.”
Peg so desperately wanted to ask her more, but she didn’t have any time. Besides, Zoey didn’t look like she’d be able to answer anything coherently at the moment anyway. Maybe after Zoey realized she was safe here she might start to calm down, and then finally Peg might get some answers. In the mean time, though, it hurt Peg in ways she didn’t yet fully understand to look at Zoey like this. She might still have looked nineteen—a detail Peg still wasn’t able to fully accept yet—but her mind was nothing like the exuberant and slightly bratty teenager Peg had been missing all these years. Peg honestly had no idea if her ordeal had been anything she could recover from, but she swore right now that she would do everything she could to help. She owed Zoey that much.
It suddenly occurred to her that there was something missing from this experience. In every futile fantasy she’d ever had about her sister returning, whether it was accompanied by joy or fear or anger on Peg’s part, there was still one common part of the vision, and Peg hadn’t even done it yet. Careful not to spook her and very much aware of how foreign the action felt after so long, Peg leaned forward and gave her baby sister a hug.
Zoey paused, and for a few moments Peg thought maybe she was too far gone to even appreciate this. Then, with some hesitance, Zoey hugged her back. And Peg finally started to cry.
Chapter 5
Peg almost got a speeding ticket on the way to the sitter’s.
It wouldn’t have been her first, not by a long shot, but she hadn’t gone more than five miles over the speed limit since getting married and having a baby. She’d had one as a teenager and five after Zoey’s disappearance, as well as a DUI that, had the timing been just slightly different, would have resulted in her license being taken away. She wouldn’t say that was the moment she realized she had a drinking problem, but it had been enough to sow a few seeds of doubt in her mind. The officer now, howe
ver, looked at the actual speed Peg was going along with her excuse that she was late to pick up her son and only gave her a warning. It helped, Peg thought, that the officer was a woman and seemed about the right age to be a mother herself.
Of course Peg couldn’t tell her that the real reason she’d been speeding was that she was too distracted that her long-vanished sister had suddenly appeared in her home. She didn’t even want to get to Brendan and then back to the house any quicker. In fact, what she wanted to do was pull over into one of the parking lots, select the parking space farthest from any other cars or people, and just sit for several minutes. She’d learned early on in motherhood that her life didn’t usually work like that anymore, that the needs of her son and her job and occasionally her husband had to trump everything else. Sometimes being kept busy was good. It kept her mind from going to blacker places. But other times it was time alone itself that kept the dark parts of her mind at bay. She needed to examine herself, understand things that were happening, just let her mind poke and prod the issues for a while. And now she had an issue bigger than she could possibly comprehend yet she had no moment to deal with it.
Indeed, despite her better judgment, Peg didn’t immediately take off after the officer was finished with her. She needed to take a breath, both figuratively and literally since she still had to worry about doing something about the smell and cleaning everything Zoey had touched once she got home.
She had to figure out what all was going to happen next. As the cop went back to her car Peg had the sudden urge to get out, run over to her, and tell her everything that had happened, Zoey’s paranoia be damned. That would have been the smart thing to do. After all, as much as she understood that Zoey’s disappearance had fucked up Peg in a deep fundamental way, she wasn’t the only one that it had affected. The police had put in an enormous amount of manpower, and they would want to know that the victim of a possible serial killer had escaped. And if the ramblings Zoey had been spewing really meant anything, then this person was still out there and might not only be looking for Zoey but other victims as well. Not telling the police might actually put others in harm’s way.
And Peg was only just now realizing that she would have to tell her mother and father. Oh dear God, would that ever be a scene.
Yet the officer drove off without Peg saying anything. For one thing she’d promised Zoey, and she was most certainly not going to betray Zoey’s trust again. For another, everything about this felt completely wrong. Now that she was alone and focused on the problems at hand, she understood that her sister had pulled her into something deep.
The strength. The aversion to sunlight. The teeth.
Something had happened to Zoey that went far beyond a simple kidnapping or even a serial killer. She still didn’t want to admit to the place that her brain wanted to take her, but neither would she completely deny the facts. Something had changed her sister.
Peg started to put the car into drive, then put it into park again. There were so many different emotions at play here and she was only starting to sort them out, but one suddenly came to her that hadn’t before—fear. Oh, she’d felt plenty of moments of fear over the last couple hours, but this was different. This wasn’t fear for herself. If she kept Zoey around, kept her hidden, kept all of this a secret, then she wasn’t only going to put herself in danger. Her family would be involved, too, even if she didn’t say anything to Tony. The important question then might be where this danger would come from. It could come from someone looking for Zoey. Or it could come from Zoey herself.
Peg wanted to say that was a ridiculous thing to think. This was her sister. She remembered Zoey. She was sometimes self-absorbed and prone to flights of fancy, but she was kind. Gentle. She saw beauty in strange things. Peg remembered a time in high school during lunch where she had witnessed Zoey, sitting at a different table with her own friends, clear a place for a girl named Carrie who had Fetal Alcohol Syndrome that was always getting picked on. Another girl, one from one of the more popular cliques, had walked by with her lunch tray and intentionally smacked the girl in the head with it, then just kept going to her own table as though she hadn’t done anything. Zoey had been very upset by this and, after a couple minutes of soothing the girl’s tears, got up from her table and went over to the popular girl’s table. Peg had been ready to get up from her own table and rush to her sister’s side if this came to a catfight, but it didn’t. Zoey had just bent down to whisper something in the popular girl’s ear. The popular girl had gone several very interesting shades ranging from red-cheeked to totally pale. At the end of lunch, when everybody was going back to class, Peg waited for Zoey to finish giving Carrie a hug and sending her on her way before Peg walked up to Zoey.
“Dude, what the hell did you say to her?” Peg asked.
Zoey just shrugged. “Nothing. Just gave her a bit of information I learned a couple weeks ago.”
“Well? What was it? I’ve never seen her look like that.”
“You know her boyfriend? The one she’s been steady with for all of high school?”
“Yeah?”
“I gave her the size and shape of a birthmark he has.”
“So?”
But Zoey hadn’t said anything more and had refused to give any more information. It didn’t occur to Peg until much later to wonder where exactly this birthmark was.
The high school political fallout from this particular moment followed Zoey for a long time, but Zoey had never appeared to regret it. And even more, she always after that day treated Carrie with as much if not more respect than she did for her other classmates.
So there shouldn’t have been a reason that Peg of all people should be afraid of Zoey. Yet the idea of bringing Brendan home while Zoey was still in the house frightened her. There were just too many questions that weren’t answered yet, and as much as Peg wanted to be happy that Zoey was alive and back, she didn’t want her son or her husband anywhere near something or someone that might be dangerous.
Peg wasn’t sure that she had a choice right now, though. If she really wanted to keep the rest of her family away from this then she should have told the cop. But she’d decided not to, so now she had to deal with any consequences. She just hoped…
Her phone rang and startled her out of her thoughts. She scrambled to get it out of her purse before it stopped ringing, not even bothering to check who was on the other end. It would probably be the sitter wondering where she was.
“Holly, I’m sorry, things have been hectic today. I swear I’m on my…”
“Peg?”
That wasn’t Holly the sitter. Peg blinked several times before her mind focused enough to remember the voice. “Oh, V. Hi.”
“Hi yourself,” V said. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, sure. Why do you ask?”
“Because you sound frantic. You kind of sound like you do when… well, you know.”
Peg took a deep breath and calmed herself. She hadn’t been aware that she was talking higher and faster than usual, but if anyone would have been able to pick that out it was V. In fact, that was exactly why she had become friends with V. She could tell when Peg was on the brink of some meltdown. It made her the perfect AA sponsor.
“I’ll be fine,” Peg said.
“Bullshit,” V said. “Now you sound like you do when you’re trying to cover up something.”
“V, I’m fine,” Peg said again, this time making a better effort to sound normal. “I’m just late getting to the babysitter’s. What’s up?”
V made a noise that indicated she was still skeptical, but she let it go. “Norm and I just wanted to make sure we were all still on for tomorrow night.”
“Tomorrow night?”
“Don’t you remember? You and Tony were going to come over for dinner?”
“Oh. Oh, right. Yeah. Yeah, as far as I know Tony still wants to go. I’ll need to double check with the sitter again, though. I don’t remember if I asked her or not.”
“Okay, serio
usly Peg. What’s going on?”
“Nothing’s going on.”
“You don’t sound right.”
Peg wanted to try denying it again, but before she could a single sob came up from her throat. That sob became more, escalating to a full on crying jag. Peg didn’t even know why she was crying. They could have been happy tears, but they sure didn’t feel happy. They were more like the tears of the desperately overwhelmed.
Eventually she got enough control over herself that she could hear V again over her sobs. “Where are you?” V asked. “I’m coming to get you. Whatever it is I can help.”
“No,” Peg said. “No, everything will be…” She stopped. Zoey had asked her not to say anything to the cops, but V was the furthest thing. She could confide in V even when she couldn’t with Tony. If she couldn’t talk about this with her then she couldn’t tell anyone at all. “Something… something has happened and I don’t know what to do.”
“What is it? Is there something I can do?”
“No. There’s not…” Except maybe there was something V could do, even if it was just a little thing. There was simply too much for Peg to juggle right now. She could be her normal good mother self, or she could be the supportive big sister. She wasn’t sure she could do both. “Wait, could you watch Brendan for a couple hours?”
“Of course, but can’t you tell me what…”
“I will, but not yet. Please. I’ll go get Brendan and bring him over to your place. And then I’ll need you to come over before Tony gets home. I’ll tell you everything then, but you have to tell Tony that I was the one watching him. Tony can’t know yet.”
Wait, what? Just what the hell are you playing at, you fucking idiot? she thought to herself. She couldn’t really be considering not telling Tony. There was no way she would be able to keep Zoey in the house without him knowing. But it was telling that she hadn’t even thought about how he would react to all this until now. She would want to believe that he would be happy for her. Given how Zoey’s ghost had haunted her she knew that he would be supportive and helpful. But only up to a point. And she was sure that point would be reached the instant Zoey showed those wicked sharp teeth, or even when she said they couldn’t call the police. He would look at the danger to his family and not have any of it, because that was the kind of person he was. He’d never broken the law in any way more major than a parking ticket, he’d never done drugs—not even marijuana—and he had never had any reason to distrust authority. He may have been supportive of Peg in getting past the kind of life she’d once led, but he would never have been able to live that life himself. He was, to use a word that was outdated long before she was born but seemed the only appropriate term now, too square.
Blood Harvest (Book 1): Blood Fruit Page 4
